Gun Violence in America

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McGARVEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today, I rise this week, with a heavy heart.

It is exactly 1 year since tragedy struck my community in Louisville, Kentucky. It was just last year, a Monday morning, the day after Easter, the first day back from spring break.

You know what kind of day this was. It was a Kentucky spring day. The air was crisp. The sun was bright. It was perfect. The type of spring morning that had families heading back into school and had us heading back into work with a sense of rebirth and renewal.

Unfortunately, it didn't last. Spring's ritual beauty was shattered by the unfamiliar booms from an AR-15, the acrid smells of smoke, the sounds of sirens, of screams.

It was a Monday morning, April 10, 2023, that a lone gunman took an assault rifle into the Old National Bank on Main Street in Louisville, Kentucky, and opened fire on his colleagues. He took the lives of five innocent Louisvillians: Josh Barrick, Deana Eckert, Jim Tutt, Juliana Farmer, and my friend, Tommy Elliott.

Eight other people were injured, including officer Nick Wilt. He was in just his fourth shift as a police officer when he ran headfirst into gunfire. His heroism saved lives, but he took an AR-15 round to the head. Miraculously, he survived, and he continues to recover and get stronger every day.

That wasn't it. Just hours later and just a few blocks away, Chea'von Moore was killed at the Jefferson Community & Technical College. Another young woman was struck by bullets in the crossfire between classes. Thankfully, she survived.

That was a Monday morning. It got worse. There was another mass shooting in Louisville later that week. Combined with the tragedies of everyday gun violence, five more Louisvillians were killed by gunfire by week's end.

It was awful. It ripped into us as a community. The scars are still there for so many to see, especially now, especially this week. I think any decent person hearing this story recognizes that it is tragic. Anyone with an iota of compassion for the families, for the lives lost, for the senseless waste of human potential knows how sad this is.

If I told you this story 20 years ago, the world would have stopped. It would have been all you heard about on the news, on the internet, and in newspapers. It would have been a national crisis that would have demanded urgent action and all of our attention.

Today, it was off the news quickly.

Why? I can answer that.

We have grown accustomed to this. Unbelievably, this is our norm.

Now, Louisville, Kentucky, on a perfect spring morning, the day after Easter, the first day back from spring break isn't unique in the horrors it experienced from a mass shooting that day. No, it just got added to a very long list of American cities experiencing this tragedy.

Gone are the days of recognizing American cities for their contributions to our culture--Motown, the City of Brotherly Love, the Big Apple, the Gateway to the West, the City of Angels, the Big Easy.

No. Now we define our cities by their tragedies, Aurora, Uvalde, Las Vegas, Highland Park, Newtown, Orlando, Buffalo, Nashville, El Paso, Monterey Park, and Louisville, Kentucky.

It was one of those moments as a lifelong Louisvillian you will always remember. I know where I was when I got the call. I was still with my family. In these jobs there are times you try to shield your children from some of the things you have to deal with here, but it was too shocking. I looked at my wife and I said: ``There has been a mass shooting.'' My elementary school daughter heard me. Her face sank. She was ashen. She just looked at us, and she said: ``Which school?''

Of course that was her first reaction. In elementary schools they now do active-shooter drills instead of tornado drills. Gun violence is the number one killer of kids in America. We can't be shocked by that reaction.

Even though it broke my heart--and maybe it should--we can't let it break our brains.

I actually think we agree that 20 years ago these tragedies would have hit much harder, that they would have been an anomaly instead of the norm.

What has changed? Why is it different?

Well, I can point to one thing: The assault weapon ban has expired. Since then, the gun culture has exploded, and I don't mean hunting and responsible gun ownership. I mean the toxic culture promoted by gun manufacturers and the NRA. The idea that weapons of war are toys and status symbols. That the right to arm yourself with the capacity to kill en masse trumps our right to live.

America's epidemic of gun violence that takes more than 40,000 lives per year and more children than any other cause almost always has a slew of common denominators: a firearm--often a semiautomatic-- purchased under a legal framework that only exists in America.

Nowhere else in the world has seen this epidemic of death and done absolutely nothing about it.

Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle insist that this is a coincidence, that the very instrument of death for hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans makes us safer, and that the more we have, the safer we will be, that somehow if every American had a gun, rates of gun violence would decrease.

It would be comically absurd if it weren't so dangerous and so heartbreaking. It should break our hearts, each time, each loss of life, as if it were happening 20, 25 years ago; the gut-wrenching disbelief we felt over Columbine. We can't let it break our brains. It isn't that complicated.

This is not the world we are forced to live in. This is the world we have chosen to live in. We in this body can do something about it.

No, nobody is talking about coming to your house and taking your guns. Nobody wants to stop hunting trips. We are talking about the most basic, commonsense measures: Like safe storage, waiting periods, universal background checks, stopping the free flow of assault weapons and armor-piercing ammo.

Will these measures end gun violence in America? No, sadly they will not.

Will they save American lives? Absolutely. Immediately.

We can debate how many lives, but isn't even one worth saving?

This is not some fringe fantasy either. These are literally some of the most popular bipartisan proposals in America. They are approved by 70, 80, 90 percent of the American public.

Today, the Biden administration announced a new rule expanding background checks for gun sales. This closes the gun show loophole, ensures that guns aren't sold or traded for profit without a background check.

Good. However, there is more to do.

Our constituents are crying out to us. We are all tired of seeing children killed in their schools and worrying that ours could be next.

Commonsense gun reforms, not only are they overwhelmingly popular everywhere, they are necessary. While they are overwhelmingly popular everywhere, they are not overwhelmingly popular where they need to be. Here. In this building.

Last year, after the shooting in Louisville, I approached many of my colleagues across the aisle. I did it one-on-one, not in front of the cameras, not for social media, but to really ask and say, I think we agree. We want our communities to be safer. Where can we meet on this? What can we do to protect our kids and our communities and save lives?

I had really great conversations, talked about things that we have in common, things what we can do. However, routinely I was told that at the end of the day you know that is not something we can get through here.

Why not? We are ready. We are waiting. I am tired of waiting. The American people are tired of waiting. We can start saving lives today, and we know it.

I know that my friends on the other side of the aisle are good people, and I mean that. I don't know in this instance, though, what we are afraid of by simply putting these things to a vote.

Gun violence right now is a choice, and it is time to make a new one. We can start saving lives today, and we should.

Tlaib), my colleague.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McGARVEY. Mr. Speaker, as a parent, this is heartbreaking. I had a parent tell me after the Uvalde shooting they now look at their child's shoes every day before they go to school just in case they have to identify them.

I always said every policymaker in America should have been required to drop their kids off at school the day after Uvalde like I did.

This is something we can do something about.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McGARVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative DeSaulnier for his wonderful words and his courage in telling his personal story.

We have talked about mass shootings today, and I think it is also important that we put some focus on everyday gun violence. We have talked about guns. Let's also talk about crime. Let's talk about the root causes of crime as well, and make sure that we are doing everything we can--from public safety to guns, to things like jobs, affordable housing, healthcare, hunger, education.

We also do need to talk about mental health and make sure that people in this country have the mental health support they need and they deserve. There is no argument that the number one cause of gun deaths in this country is death by suicide, but when you talk about suicide and death by a firearm, there are ways to help prevent it.

I met this week with the UofL trauma team, who did an amazing job on April 10, 2023, keeping people alive and navigating an incredibly difficult situation. And because suicide is the number one cause of gun deaths in this country, I talked with them about it.

I spoke with Dr. Jason Smith, who is a trauma surgeon at the University of Louisville, and he shared a person is most at risk of taking their own life when they reach their lowest point, and that lowest point typically only lasts for about 10 minutes. If you can get someone through that lowest point, they have an amazingly increased chance of living a full life.

We know that there are laws that work to protect us. In my State of Kentucky, we watch it across the river in Indiana where they have a State red flag law.

We can make this a national priority, through law and through funding, to help people get what they need, to help people who are in crisis and temporarily remove them from a firearm while retaining their rights.

Representative DeSaulnier referenced that suicide is growing among young people, and, unfortunately, it is. But that is not the only group affected. In fact, a statistic that worries me, because Louisville is located just north of Fort Knox, we have about 50,000 veterans who live in our community. The single-most at-risk group for death by suicide with a firearm are White men over the age of 50 who own a firearm and are a veteran.

Mr. Speaker, I sit on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, where even today in a committee hearing with the Secretary, death by suicide was brought up for veterans. The people who were brave enough to put on a uniform and sacrifice everything for us, we should be brave enough to pass policies in this body that will help them.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McGARVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Neguse for his wonderful words. I can't believe it has been 25 years since Columbine, another tragedy which I can remember exactly where I was when I found out that news. We went to our TV screens to watch in horror as students fled from the building, as parents wondered if their kids were alive. We grieve with Colorado, not just for Columbine, but for Boulder and for Aurora, for the tragedy you all have endured.

Hearing Representative Neguse talk about the tragedies in his community reminded me that when the mass shooting happened in Louisville on April 10 last year, I had several Members of Congress reach out to me immediately. They were not only offering their condolences and their sympathies and asking what they could do to help--many of them had experienced the same tragedy in their communities--they offered advice on how to deal with it and how to help your community get through it while you yourself grieve. In essence, there is a playbook on what to do after a mass shooting.

Mr. Speaker, I would like this body to act and have a playbook on how to stop the shootings from happening in the first place, because we know how to do it.

We know the damage that assault weapons cause. We know the need for safe storage and universal background checks, and I am tired of hearing there is nothing we can do when we are doing nothing.

We can solve this uniquely American problem, and we can solve it together, keeping our kids and our communities safer. It just takes the political will from this body to do it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source