Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF SANDY HOOK

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I add my congratulations to Senator Chambliss. It is strange, coming here in the last 2 years and getting to serve only 2 years with giants in the Senate like Saxby, like Tom Harkin, and like Senator Rockefeller, whose legacies will live on.

Knowing what a good soul Senator Chambliss is, I bet he would enjoy the Newtown Labor Day parade. I have a picture of it here.

We had the 53rd annual Newtown Labor Day parade this last year. This is the biggest event that happens in Connecticut on Labor Day. It is a celebration of the town. There are 120 different groups that make up the parade. There is the Newtown High School marching band. This year Grand Marshall Sydney Eddison was proudly marching at the front. The Litchfield Hills Pipe Band and newer groups such as the Marching Cobras of New York were there this year. It is a must-stop if you are a Senator, Governor, or Congressperson. We all march together at the front of the parade regardless of party. It is a really fantastic and wonderful place.

This year there were marchers from the Avielle Foundation; a truck decorated in pink promoting a culture of

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kindness. Sandy Hook Elementary School had a float called ``The Magic School Bus to Sandy Hook School.'' It had a positive message of ``Think You Can, Work Hard, Get Smart, Be Kind,'' and the judges selected Sandy Hook School's float as the winner in the best school category.
It is a reminder that Sandy Hook is a positive place; Newtown is a positive place--a place that is rebounding as we come upon the 2-year anniversary, the 2-year memorial of the tragic shooting in that town that took the lives of 20 6- and 7-year-olds, and 6 of their teachers who were sworn to protect them.

Senator Blumenthal and I have come to the floor today to mark that 2-year anniversary and to talk for a brief few moments about what has happened over the last 2 years--what has happened that has been positive, and the work that is left to still be done.

There are a lot of positive things that have happened. It is impossible to try to find any good that comes out of this, but the foundational work that has happened in the memory of these children is remarkable.

The Jessica Rekos Foundation was formed in an effort to pay homage to Jessica's love of horses and her love of whales. They opened up a summer camp where kids ages 6 to 10, the age that Jessica was when she passed, could be able to enjoy horses, learn how to ride and take care of them. They raise money to sponsor the Orca Fellowship, which is dedicated to conservation initiatives for the orca whale.

I mentioned the Avielle Foundation. Avielle's brilliant parents started a foundation seeking to do new research into brain activity. They have a new PSA video to highlight the need to understand the aspects of the brain that can lead to aggression and violence.

Ana Grace Marquez-Greene. Her family is a musical family. They started a foundation which tries to identify ways to build stronger communities. Her father is a wonderful jazz musician, and he recently released an album called ``Beautiful Life.'' The proceeds all go to this effort.

Sandy Hook Promise, a group of families, is asking schools and communities to take a simple first step to ending violence. That first step is to talk to children and teens about how to be a good bystander--to look out for those first signs of trouble, and to report anything that may seem out of the ordinary.

We frankly have seen how that small act can make a big difference. Just last week a young man was arrested in Utah after he admitted he had brought a gun to school with the intent to shoot a girl he had a falling out with and then his plans were to open fire on the rest of his classmates, but a student heard about it and tipped off authorities so he could be stopped before he carried out his plan. That is what Sandy Hook Promise is trying to do in the wake of this tragedy, to spread the word that those small acts can make a difference.

I will talk for a few minutes about what hasn't been done when it comes to policy changes, but there is a lot that has happened when it comes to policy as well. In Connecticut we passed the strongest antigun violence measure in the country. It cracks down on illegal guns and invests more resources into identifying trouble spots before they happen. Washington State just passed a new referendum with 60 percent of the vote that extends their background check systems to private sales and to transfers. In Colorado they passed a strong new law as well. On the private sector side retailers are stepping up. Big retailers from Starbucks to Chipotle, to Target have taken proactive steps, separate and aside from anything government has done, to keep firearms out of their stores. So there are a lot of positives that have happened in the private sector and in the public sector, and hopefully we can build on that work. Hopefully Congress can recognize that our silence, our inability to pass anything in the 2-year period of time since Sandy Hook passed, effectively makes us complicit in the continuing assault on students all across this country.

Here is the map. In the 2 years since Newtown, there have been 95 different school shootings all across the country. Ninety-five different school shootings have occurred. During the last 3 months alone, there were 17 school shootings, including a single week where there was one every day, five events over the course of 5 days. This is an absolute epidemic that is happening all across this country since Sandy Hook. Why I say we are complicit is that when there is no response from Congress, when there is not a single legislative act passed to try to do something about this, it sends a message of quiet endorsement of what is happening. I know that is not our intent. I know that is not in the hearts or minds of any of our Members, but people notice when every week there is a new story of a school shooting all across the country and Congress does absolutely nothing about it while the private sector and State legislatures step up to do something about it. So this is a day when we remember what happened 2 years ago, but it is also a day in which we should feel ashamed that we haven't done a single thing to try to stem this tide.

I get it that we are not going to get a background check bill passed in the next 2 years, but why not work on mental health funding? Why not have everybody in this Chamber spend 5 minutes of your time reading the report that was just released by the Connecticut child advocate detailing the history of Adam Lanza's intersection with the mental health system during his early years and adolescence and how it failed step after step, year after year, month after month--a lack of followup, a lack of coordination, a lack of diagnosis. We have a mental health system in this country that is broken and can be fixed--yes, with some more resources but just with better coordination. That is something we can work on together over the next 2 years. So we can say when this chart gets peppered with another 50 dots by this time next year that we didn't just stand silent.

Nobody is more articulate than Senator Blumenthal in talking about that day, and I don't want to relive it on this floor, except to share the most powerful testimony I have heard about what happened that day.

This is a community that is recovering, but it is still a community in crisis. We don't lose 20 little boys and girls and just come back to life in 2 years. It is a resilient community, but it is a community that still hurts, and it hurts in part because they don't see us doing anything about it.

So before I yield the floor to Senator Blumenthal to say a few words, I wish to close with somebody else's words. I have shared these words on the floor before, but they are just as powerful now as they were the last time I read them.

This is Neil Heslin testifying before Congress in February of 2013. He is still Jesse Lewis's father, one of the little boys who was killed that day. So as we think about what happened 2 years ago in Sandy Hook and we think about the charge we have before us and we think about the fact that there are those of us such as myself and Senator Blumenthal and others who will not rest until we honor their memories by our actions, let me give you these words:

On December 14, Jesse got up and got ready for school. He was always excited to go to school. I remember on that day we stopped by Misty Vale Deli. It's funny the things you remember.

I remember Jesse got the sausage, egg and cheese he always gets, with some hot chocolate. And I remember the hug he gave me when I dropped him off. He just held me, and he rubbed my back. I can still feel that hug.

And Jesse said, ``It's going to be alright. Everything's going to be okay, Dad.'' Looking back it makes me wonder. What did he know? Did he have some idea about what was going to happen? But at the time I didn't think much of it. I just thought he was being sweet.

Jesse had this idea that you never leave people hurt. If you can help somebody, you do it. If you can make somebody feel better, you do it. If you can leave somebody a little better off, you do it.

They tell me that's how he died. I guess we still don't know exactly what happened at that school. Maybe we'll never know. But what people tell me is that Jesse did something different.

When he heard the shooting, he didn't run and hide. He started yelling. People disagree on the last thing he said. One person who was there said he yelled ``run.'' Another person said he told everybody to ``run now.'' Ten kids from my son's class made it to safety. I hope to God something Jesse did helped them survive that day.

What I know is that Jesse wasn't shot in the back. He took two bullets. The first one grazed the side of his head. ..... The other hit

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him in the forehead. Both bullets were fired from the front. That means that the last thing my son did was look Adam Lanza straight in the face and scream to his classmates to run. The last thing he saw was that coward's eyes.
Before he died, Jesse and I used to talk about maybe coming to Washington someday. He wanted to go up to the Washington monument. When we talked about it last year Jesse asked if we could come and meet the President.

..... Jesse believed in you.

This is Neil Heslin, his father talking.

..... Jesse believed in you. He learned about you in school and he believed in you. I want to believe in you, too. I know you can't give me Jesse back. Believe me, if I thought you could, I'd be asking you for that.

But I want to believe that you will think about what I told you here today. I want to believe you'll think about it and then you'll do something about it, whatever you can do to make sure no other father has to see what I've seen.

That is a pretty powerful message, a message that on the 2-year anniversary mark of that horrible tragedy we would be wise to listen to.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Connecticut is recognized.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, on December 14, 2012, we saw evil, but we also saw good. We saw tragedy, but we also saw actions that should continue to inspire us.

The evil was in a deranged young man who committed unspeakable and unimaginable horrific acts, but the good was exemplified by the police, the emergency responders, and the teachers who not only risked their lives but saved other ones. The good was something that came forward in the days and months and in the past 2 years.

Often I visit the playgrounds that have been built throughout the State of Connecticut in memory of those children, in memory of Charlotte Bacon in West Haven and Ana Grace Marquez-Greene in Hartford, Jessica Rekos in Fairfield, and Dylon Hockley in Westfork, and Victoria Soto in Stratford. I visit them to watch children playing, children often the same age as the wonderful, beautiful children who perished on that day, and parents about the same age as the teachers who lost their lives, sixth-grade educators.

On that day parents in Newtown took their children to school, kissed them goodbye and went about their days, went to work to plan play dates and snack breaks and holiday parties, and just hours into that morning many parents were standing at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire Station where I also went that day. What I saw was through the eyes of a parent, not just a public official, the cries of grief, the faces, and voices filled with tears and longing. Those images I will never forget, and they have redoubled my own determination to try to make America safer and better, to keep faith with those 26 wonderful people whose lives were lost that day, and more than 30,000 people who perished in the United States as a result of violence simply because many of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time--on the street or in neighborhoods or in their own home.

The good that is done every day by our police and firemen and emergency responders to try to stem and stop this epidemic of violence cannot overcome the flood of guns in our Nation and cannot compensate for the lack of effective measures to make America safer and better by making our laws against gun violence more effective.

I will never forget that day or any of the victims or their families, and I hope America never forgets them as well. We are memorializing now their wonderful lives by acts of kindness, but the best and truest way to memorialize them in history is to approve effective, commonsense, sensible measures against gun violence.

In the aftermath of those horrific events of December 14, all of Connecticut, certainly in Newtown, and our State came together to lift those who were so devastatingly impacted, and those families have shown incredible strength. They sat in the gallery, they came to visit us and our colleagues urging action. Congress's failure to act is contemptible and unconscionable and a betrayal of those individuals. The action that is ultimately truest and best as a memorial to them will be for this Congress to act.

In Newtown and around the Nation, every community in some way was affected in those days and in some way came together with Newtown. So my hope is still that that spirit will be an inspiration to action, that it will be an impetus to the Congress for effective, commonsense measures that will protect countless others who are in danger and who will die if Congress does not act.

More than 60,000 firearm deaths have occurred since December 14, 2012.

There are 32,000 firearm deaths per year. Those families have demonstrated unrelenting resolve, and so should we, and we will. It took more than 10 years for the Brady law to be approved, even after a President of the United States was almost assassinated and his Press Secretary, Jim Brady, was severely injured and paralyzed.

I hope it will not take 10 years for action to be taken by Congress, but we need the persistence and perseverance that will carry us through whatever it takes to achieve lasting reform.

I have been proud to serve as a member of the Judiciary Committee and to have worked hard for this measure, helping to lead the effort to approve the ban on high-capacity magazines as well as assault weapons and background checks. But a mental health initiative and school safety initiative have also been part of what we need do. I will continue my work on those efforts--mental health and school safety bills I have introduced, including the Lori Jackson Domestic Violence Survivor Protection Act.

Lori Jackson was estranged from her husband. She obtained a court order against him because of the real evidence of danger from him. Unfortunately, that court order failed to save her life because it was only temporary, and it failed to take away the guns her husband had. The Lori Jackson Domestic Violence Survivor Protection Act will fill that gap in our laws now.

Women are five times as likely to die as a result of domestic violence when there is a gun in the home. One in five women are victims of domestic violence at some point in their lives. That is the reason we need to continue this fight on many fronts. Since that day or about then, on December 14, I have worn a bracelet and I still do. The writing has faded and is no longer visible, but the one thing it said was, ``Love wins.'' I truly believe that love won in Newtown, that love won when Connecticut's legislature passed a strong and effective measure. It was the next step. It is not the end of the work, but the next step. I believe that love won through the grace and courage and strength of the families of those children and the loved ones of the teachers who lost their lives.

I believe love wins every day in our classrooms around the Nation when teachers work hard--and they work hard--and resolve to keep their children safe. Love wins every day when someone stands up and speaks out against gun violence. Love will win, eventually. Honor will win. We will honor those children, and we will celebrate the love they felt so deeply and unconditionally--as only children can--unqualifiedly for their parents and their community. I believe that love will win eventually as long as we keep working.

I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

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