Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, let me associate myself with the remarks of my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, as well as the majority leader, who was here earlier today, and Senator Klobuchar--all speaking on behalf of our nominee to head the ATF, as well as Senator Blumenthal's remarks on behalf of Fairfield, CT, resident James Comey to be the head of the FBI. Very few agencies, other than the ATF and the FBI, are more intricately involved in the preservation of the health and safety of the American public, and we deserve to have votes on those nominees tonight and this week.
But I also want to associate myself with the other remarks Senator Klobuchar made. She talked about our obligation as a body to reverse these very damaging sequester cuts to NIH funding for medical research, and she listed some very compelling stories about men and women who have had their lives saved, preserved, lengthened because of discoveries made through medical research.
It is a reminder to the Senate and to the House--to anyone who treads upon these two floors--that we hold life and death in our hands with the decisions we make. We decide when we choose to fund or not fund the NIH as to whether we are going to give life to people who are waiting on those kinds of cures and treatments.
But, similarly, we make decisions about life and death when we choose not to act, when we choose to do nothing, to sit pat. In this case we make a decision to allow people to die in this country--specifically 6,633 people since December 14--when we make a choice to do nothing about the scourge of gun violence that continues to plague this Nation.
I have tried to come down here every single week--as Senator Klobuchar did in speaking about the effects of funding medical research in very personal terms--to talk about the implications of doing nothing when it comes to the increasing levels of gun violence in this country, in similarly personal terms.
December 14, of course, for most people is easily recognized as the date
when 20 6- and 7-year-olds were killed in Sandy Hook, CT, along with 6 adults who cared for them, as well as the gunman and his mother. Since that day, 6,633 people have been killed by guns at a rate of about 30 a day--the highest of any civilized nation in the world, and we do nothing.
One of those, on July 14, was Horsley Shorter, Jr. Horsley managed a Family Dollar store in Tampa, FL. Junior, as he was known, had some kids come in occasionally who would try to take things out of the store or try to steal. When he had to report them to the police, he would. But this was a very gentle man, and more often than not he would pull the kids aside and try to talk through things with them to try to help them understand what they were doing and what the implications were.
He would never do anything to instigate a fight, his friend said. In fact, his last words to one of his coworkers was ``the pen is mightier than the sword.''
What happened that day was an armed robber came into the store and demanded money from the clerk. According to police, Shorter was inside the office, and he was shot when he ran out to try to help his coworker who was at the counter. The robber then forced the clerk at gunpoint into the parking lot, where he stole the clerk's car and used it to escape. According to one friend, Shorter was very close to that coworker, took him under his wing, which was the reason he ran out into harm's way to try to save him.
This friend said:
I believe that's why that young guy is alive [today]. Junior wasn't going to watch nobody die. He gave his life for him.
About 2 weeks earlier, on July 2, Chanice Reed, 22, and Annette Reed, her mother, as well as Eddie McCuin, a 10-year-old, were shot in a triple murder in Fort Worth, TX.
An hour after the shooter killed his pregnant girlfriend, her mother, and her little brother, he walked into the Forest Hill Police Department, telling officers to arrest him because he ``did something bad.'' He was 22 years old. He had a history of domestic violence. He was sentenced to 1 year of deferred adjudication probation because of assault.
Because of a domestic dispute, and because of his easy access to guns, in order to resolve this disagreement, he shot his pregnant girlfriend, her mother, and her 10-year-old little brother.
Just a couple days ago, in Bridgeport, CT, Pablo Aquino died. He was 27 years old. He was described as a ``humble man.'' He was always down at the baseball field helping kids because he had a son playing baseball there.
He spent his days at the Fairfield County Hunting Club in Westport, where he tended to horses.
He got into an argument--a simple argument--when the suspect decided that the best way to solve this argument was to turn a gun on Pablo, killing him.
The next day, the community had a vigil for him. The vigil was to remember him but also because they did not have enough money for a funeral. So as the vigil was going on, one of his friends stood out on the corner with an empty tin can of iced-tea mix, asking passersby to contribute a couple cents for a funeral that was expected to cost $2,000.
Over the July 4 period, there were three shootings in New Haven, CT.
At around 10:30 on Wednesday night, police said somebody shot and killed 19-year-old Errol Marshal. His body was discovered on the front porch of a home, pronounced dead at the scene.
At the same time, investigators found Courtney Jackson, a 26-year-old, suffering from a gunshot wound to the stomach.
Brian Gibson, 23, of New Haven, was shot outside of a public housing complex shortly thereafter.
All three shootings were connected. All three shootings are due to the fact that too many kids and too many young adults today do not know how to resolve their disputes any other way than getting a gun, and also because in a city such as New Haven guns are like water; they are all over the place. They are all over the place because this body does not pass legislation to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. We refuse to pass a bill making it a Federal crime to illegally traffic guns.
All those seem very dissimilar from Newtown. But then there are ones you hear about that strike you as so similar to the reason why I am here today talking about this, because of the 26 people who died at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Not much more than a month after Newtown, the Griego family was killed, all in one fell swoop, in Albuquerque, NM--Greg, 51; Sarah, 40; Zephania, 9; Jael, 5; and Angelina, 2. The parents were killed by their son, the little girls and boy killed by their brother. Nehemiah was 15 years old when he took a semiautomatic weapon to kill his family. Like Adam Lanza, the shooter in Newtown, Nehemiah was a troubled teen--more troubled than anyone around could have realized. Like Adam Lanza, he took out his rage on his family, first killing his mother while she lay sleeping in her bed. Like Adam Lanza, he had plans to continue his killing spree. He was going to go to the local Wal-Mart before he was stopped. He was anticipating getting into a firefight with the police. And like Adam Lanza, he used an assault weapon that was readily available to him in his own home.
Greg, 51; Sarah, 40; Zephania, 9; Jael, 5; Angelina, 2--5 of the 6,633 people--30 or so a day--who have been killed by guns since December 14. We are not going to stop them all by passing a piece of legislation on the Senate floor. Background checks will not bring 6,600 people back, nor will a ban on human trafficking, nor will a ban on the sale of 30-round magazines or assault weapons. But they will absolutely bring some of those people back. They will absolutely lessen the rate below 30 a day.
I am going to continue to come down to the floor week after week to tell the stories of victims of gun violence, to give them a voice on the floor of the Senate, so that someday, some time, hopefully soon, this place will wake up to the fact that we do have responsibility over life and death on the floor of the Senate, and it is about time, when it comes to the rising incidents of gun violence across this country, we do something about it.
I yield back the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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