Water Resources Development Act of 2013 - Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, let me first associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Maryland. We are engaging in a bit of theater of the absurd on the floor of the Senate, as we have been chided for years now that the Senate would not and could not adopt a budget.
Having finally done that, Republicans are refusing to allow us to move forward with the process that would finally get us out of this crisis-by-crisis mentality and do what the American people have wanted us to do for a long time, which is to sit across the table with Republicans, two parties in one room, with the TV cameras on, trying to find some settlements, somewhere where 70 percent of the American public can find agreement with us.
GUN CONTROL
I am here, though, to turn back the clock about 3 weeks to another day that I would argue is amongst the saddest this Chamber has seen in a long time. That was the day in which we went against the wishes of 90 percent of the American public and refused to adopt a measure that would have applied background checks to the vast majority of gun purchases in this country, that they also would have for the first time made gun trafficking, illegal gun trafficking, a Federal crime.
During those days I came down to this floor four or five times to tell the stories of victims, the victims of Sandy Hook, but also the victims of, frankly, countless other mass shootings and routine gun violence mainly in our urban corridors. I said no matter what happens on that vote that I wouldn't stop, that I would come down here and continue to tell the real stories that should matter.
We didn't get that bill passed, even though we had the support of 55 Members of the Senate. Our fight isn't over because the plight of gun victims and the surviving of relatives of gun victims are not over either.
This is an old chart. It is one I had up here for a number of hours during that week. It displays the number of people who have been killed by guns since December 14, 2012, when my State was witness to one of the worst mass shooting tragedies this country has ever seen.
We would have to now have two charts up here to simply display the same thing, because this number, which was somewhere in the 3,000s, has now easily cleared 4,000, maybe even up close to 5,000--the number of people who since Sandy Hook have been killed across this country by gun violence.
I wanted to come back down here to the Senate floor this week, as I will next week and the week after, to continue to tell the stories of who these people are, because they deserve an answer. The status quo is not acceptable to the mounting legions of families who have lost loved ones due to gun violence that could have been prevented if we had the courage to stand up and do something in this Chamber, if we had the courage to take on the gun lobby and make some commonsense changes the majority of Americans, the vast majority of Americans, support.
Let me tell you a few of these stories today, because I know we have other issues on the floor today to talk about. Let me tell you about Shamari Jenkins. She was 21 years old, and she lived in Hartford. About a week ago, on April 29, she was gunned down while driving in a car through the city of Hartford with her boyfriend. She was driving through the city when someone shot a couple of bullets through the back of the vehicle. It hit her and killed her. It went through her torso and her shoulder. She was 4 months pregnant when she was shot and killed. She was just a couple days away from that magical day many parents have experienced when they find out whether they are having a boy or a girl. That appointment was just a couple days away when she was killed. Close friends and family describe her as sweet and upbeat, with a lot of energy. Shamari was killed in Hartford at age 21 on April 29. Every single day in this country, on average, 30 people are killed by guns, many of them stories just like this.
The ages of all of the people I have been talking about on this floor--you get a couple who are in their forties or their fifties, a few, as I will talk about later, even younger--the majority of these kids are 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 years old. It is a cruel moment to take somebody from this world, because when you are 21 you have a vision as to who this person is going to be. You can sort of see the greatness. Her friends described her as someone who always had a smile on her face. Yet you steal so much of their life. Shamari Jenkins, 21 years old, killed a week ago.
There are younger victims such as Caroline Starks, who, 1 day after Shamari Jenkins was killed, was killed in Cumberland County, KY, by her 5-year-old brother. She was 2 years old, and she was killed in an accidental shooting by her 5-year-old brother. She was killed by a .22 caliber Crickett rifle. They were messing around in the little bit of time that their mother had stepped outside onto the porch. Her brother picked up this little Crickett rifle, one he used to go hunting with his family. He was 5 years old, and he shot his 2-year-old sister. She died. It was a Crickett rifle. It is a cute name, right? It is a cute name because it is marketed to kids and sold as ``My First Rifle.'' It is made by a company that also makes another line of guns called Chipmunk rifles.
I certainly understand that in a lot of families there is a long history of hunting together as a family. The reality is that some of these shootings are malicious, with the number of guns that are out there. A gun lobby organization that used to spend a lot of time on gun safety now spends most of its time simply arguing for laws that perpetuate the number of guns in society. These accidental shootings are happening more and more.
Another one happened 3 days before Caroline Starks was killed. Michele Wanko of Parkside, PA, lost her husband William this year when she accidentally shot and killed him in the basement of their home. He was giving her lessons on how to use a semiautomatic pistol. As he demonstrated to her how to use one, she picked up another gun and accidentally fired it into his upper chest. Her screams awoke their 5-year-old son, who was sleeping alongside their 2-year-old son upstairs. It is not just mass shootings, it is not just urban violence, it is also this rash of accidental shootings taking the lives of mothers and children that we have seen as well.
We still should talk about these mass shootings because our inaction almost guarantees it is going to happen again. A lot of people said the law that we had on the floor of the Senate a couple of weeks ago had nothing to do with Newtown, so why are we talking about a piece of legislation that ultimately wouldn't have prevented an Adam Lanza from walking into that school and shooting 26 people.
That is true, but we know from experience that a better background check system could have prevented at least one mass tragedy in this country, and that is the Columbine tragedy. The guns that were used to perpetuate that crime on April 20, 1999, were bought at a gun show, the Tanner Gun Show, by a friend of the assailants. She bought the guns at a gun show because she knew if she bought them at a federally licensed dealer, she wouldn't have been able to do so. She would not have been able to walk out of that store with a gun. She went into a gun show where she wouldn't have to go through a background check.
Perhaps if we had a stronger background check system on the books on April 20, 1999, Rachel Joy Scott would still be with us today. Rachel was an aspiring actress. Her father said she was just made for the camera. She wasn't just acting, she was writing plays. She had written one already, and she was getting ready to write another one. She was a devout Christian and she kept diaries where she wrote about her hope for living a life that would change the world with small acts of compassion.
Maybe if we had had a better background check system in 1999, Daniel Lee Rohrbaough would still be alive today. He worked in his family's car and home stereo business. He loved electronics, and he had real talent for it. He would make a little bit of money working at the store, but he would never spend it on himself. He spent almost all of the money he earned on Christmas presents. His father remembers Danny's generosity by saying he didn't spend any of the money on himself, and he was upset because he came up $4 short on the last present for Christmas.
Maybe we would still have Daniel Conner Mauser with us today. He was a straight-A student. He was the top biology student in his sophomore class. He was shy, but he knew he was shy and he wanted to overcome it, so he joined the debate team to become more confident about public speaking. He was as compassionate as Daniel was. When a neighbor became ill, he went down there, raked leaves, and asked how he could help his neighbor. He loved swimming, skiing, and hiking. He was on the school's cross-country team, a straight-A student, and the top biology student in his class. We will never get to know what Daniel Conner Mauser would have been.
If we had a better background check system, maybe Matthew Joseph Kechter would still be alive today. He was another straight-A student but a student athlete as well. He was a starting lineman on Columbine's football team. He was a great student athlete but also a great older brother. His younger brother looked up to Matthew and would wait at the mailbox for Matthew to come home from school every day. Matt hoped to attend the University of Colorado where he wanted to study engineering--a straight-A student, a student athlete who wanted to be an engineer. Doesn't that sound like the type of kid we need in this country today?
These are another half dozen of the thousands of victims we have read about in the newspapers and watched news about on TV since December 14, 2012.
One of the arguments I have heard repeated over and over, both during the debate on the floor and since then, is that even if we passed these laws, it wouldn't matter. Sure, you say the guns were purchased outside of the background check system for the Columbine shootings. Even if the background checks were required, these kids would have found another way to get the guns.
Another way of putting the argument is criminals are going to violate the law, so why pass the law in the first place? That is as absurd an argument as you can muster in this place. Frankly, that is an argument not to have any laws at all. People drive drunk and they kill people. Republicans aren't coming down to the floor of the Senate and saying we should get rid of drunk driving laws because there are people who still go out and drink and drive. There are, unfortunately, other men out there who beat their wives, but nobody is coming down to the floor of the Senate or the House and arguing we should get rid of our domestic violence laws because some people don't follow them.
The fact is we make a decision as a country what standards we are going to apply to conduct. We trust that is going to funnel some conduct away from the kinds we don't want into the kinds we want. It is also going to allow us to punish those who act outside of the boundaries we have set. That is why we still have drunk driving laws and domestic violence laws, even if some people ignore them. It is why we should have an expectation that criminals in this country shouldn't have guns, even if some criminals are still going to ignore the law and get the guns anyway. That way we can punish those people who do wrong, and we can have some comfort in knowing that some people will choose to do right because of the consequence of the law being in place.
There was no consequence for that young lady, the friend of the Columbine shooters, when she went outside the background check system to get guns for her friends. We will never know if she would have made a different decision, but why not have the law to test out the theory. For the thousands of people who have died since December 14, they would take that chance that the law will work.
I yield the floor.
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