One Year Since Uvalde

Floor Speech

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Ms. CROCKETT. Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the 19 children and 2 teachers murdered in Uvalde, Texas, 1 year ago today.

One excruciating year has passed for the families of those we lost at Robb Elementary that day. A year of empty childhood bedrooms and vacant desks where a child should be. One full year, and what do we have to show for it? What has this legislative body done to answer the pain of these parents with policy?

I ask myself this: Have we passed any measures on this floor that will stop the next Uvalde? The answer to that is an obvious no, we have not, because in the year since the second worst school shooting in American history, there has been 39 more.

My district is about 355 miles north of Uvalde, but the horror of that day haunts every Texan as if it happened right next door; maybe that is because it is happening next door, in a wave of gun violence that has touched every corner of Texas, in every public space we once saw as safe.

Just this month, my home of north Texas has grieved the deaths of eight Texans in a hateful act of violence at a shopping mall. That was the ninth mass shooting in Texas in 14 years. Fourteen years that lawmakers in Texas and Washington have used to loosen gun regulations.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you something: As a Texan and as an American, I am tired. I am tired of being traumatized. Texas is tired of the terror. It is time to do our jobs and legislate instead of pontificate.

The 21 Texans ripped from their families last year deserve more. The people of Uvalde who have grieved and cried and demanded change deserve more. I hope we don't come back here in a year with the same amount of nothing to show for these grieving families. I hope we can show up having passed universal background checks and a ban on the weapon of war that stole those children's lives, but if history--history that many Republicans don't believe we should have taught in schools--if history is any indication, then yet another year will pass, more lives will be lost, and politicians will put on their pastoral hats and issue prayers instead of practicing what they preach, which is to be tough on crime and to keep these weapons of war out of the hands of the many domestic terrorists that have, frankly, been radicalized by the rightwing extreme rhetoric.

Regardless of what the Republicans do or don't do, regardless of their lack of courage, I will continue doing what I do best, which is standing for commonsense solutions that will save lives.

To my colleagues, I challenge you. Let's not fail these parents and children again. The number one killer of children in this country is guns right now. It is time that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle practice what they preach and be pro-life.

Mr. Speaker, let's save some lives.

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