Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for those very moving and important comments on the Senate floor at this profoundly significant time in the history of our State and our Nation.…
Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for those very moving and important comments on the Senate floor at this profoundly significant time in the history of our State and our Nation.
Remembering Daniel K. Inouye
I want to join my colleagues who have expressed their admiration for Senator Inouye and our sense of loss at his passing. I admired him deeply as a patriot, a warfighter, a public servant, who was unstinting and unwavering in his commitment to our Constitution, the principles of equality and justice, and our national defense.
His loss is a loss for the country, but, particularly, personally, for all of us who serve in this body. I knew him less well than colleagues who have spoken eloquently, such as Senators Reid and Durbin and Boxer and Lieberman, and one of my regrets, as I stand here, is that I did not have the time to know him better because he was such an extraordinary human being.
Perhaps one of the lessons for me personally is that time is short, as we all know, and we should make a greater effort in this body and among us in this profession to know our colleagues and to treasure their friendship.
I want to also thank my colleague from Connecticut for his very perceptive and powerful words on the tragedy in Newtown, CT, which brings me to the floor today with such a heavy heart. I thank my colleagues who have reached out to me, including the Senator from Vermont, a great friend, Senators Klobuchar and Durbin and Bennet and so many others seeking to help Connecticut. The collegiality of this body has been brought home to me in these days when others have sought to provide not only consolation but also suggestions for action.
One of my reasons for being on the floor today is to talk about action we can take. I want the families who are grieving now to know that my standing here to talk about policy and action in no way means any disrespect or effort to intrude on their grieving and emotional rebuilding. But we know on Friday a tragedy befell the community of Newtown, CT, and that tragedy is expressed in S. Res. 621 and H. Res. 833.
I thank my colleagues in both Houses for condemning the attack and offering their condolences to the people of Connecticut and, more importantly, the people and families who suffered these losses most directly. I have spent the last 4 days--or a better part of them--in Connecticut. Those 4 days are a time that I do not want to relive, ever.
I first learned about this incident on Friday morning in the midst of a normal day. I had events scheduled. I heard there was something wrong in the Danbury area.
As the details mounted, I left Hartford to go to Newtown and to the firehouse in Sandy Hook. I arrived there as a public official, but what I saw was through the eyes of a parent.
The firehouse in Sandy Hook was where parents went to find out if their children were okay. The way they found out was that their children appeared, or they did not. After a while, some of the children came. Some were reunited with their parents there or at the school, and their parents took them home, and others did not.
I will live forever with the sights and sounds of those parents as they emerged--the cries and sobbing, the cries of grief and anguish, the look on those faces.
The murderer blasted his way into the elementary school in Sandy Hook armed with a Bushmaster AR-15, an assault rifle; a 10mm Glock pistol; a 9mm Sig Sauer; and with multiple magazines filled with hundreds of rounds, that he used in an execution-style massacre.
Wayne Carver, who is the State medical examiner for Connecticut, has been in that job for more than 30 years. He has seen it all. But he has said he has seen nothing like this ever. There were 20 small bodies ripped apart, executed en masse.
There is no question evil came to Newtown, as Governor Malloy said that day. Evil came in its starkest, most inhumane terms. But heroism also came to Newtown.
The SWAT teams that went into that building actually saved lives. They saved hundreds of lives of students and staff in the school because the murderer took his own life when he knew they were entering.
There is the heroism, of course, of the principal, teachers, and others who ran toward the sound of gunfire. They ran toward danger to protect their children, children who were 6 and 7, their faces now on the front pages of newspapers with their stories inside.
There is the heroism of the State troopers who had to confirm the identities of the victims for their families and stayed with those families throughout the weekend.
There is the heroism of the community itself. Newtown is, indeed, a quintessential New England town. Everybody knows everybody else, which is a good thing but in a way also a bad thing because everyone's children knew the other children.
At the vigil Sunday night, two of the children who attend that school came up to me to show me some of the necklaces they had made with blue beads, 20 of them. There were 20 blue beads, each one for a child victim, and 6 stars for the adults. This community is not only quintessentially New England, it is quintessentially American in its strength, its resoluteness, its resiliency, its caring and courage.
Part of what has also inspired Newtown is the outpouring of support they have received from all across America and all across the world. Never doubt the messages you have sent, the thoughts and prayers made a difference to them. They truly have.
Newtown is a call for national reflection and for coming together. This tragedy hit Connecticut, but the town of Newtown is supported by the grief shared by all Americans, but it is also a call for action. It is the right time to ask what we can do to stop this sort of tragedy.
In recent years, there have been horrific shootings at Virginia Tech, in Aurora, in Oak Ridge, on university campuses, movie theaters, and in places of worship. There were many other places where unsuspecting Americans, going about their everyday lives, had those lives cut short in a few minutes of slaughter.
In Newtown, a lone gunman was able to kill 20 elementary schoolchildren ranging from 6 to 7 years old. He killed the school's principal, the school psychologist, and four teachers.
Sadly, there have always been and there always will be mentally ill people, mentally deranged or hateful people who want to lash out violently at the world. We will never be able to stop all of them from doing harm. But even if we cannot prevent all these tragedies, we must not surrender and say we will do nothing to prevent any more of them.
In the last few days, everywhere I have gone in Newtown, people have come up to me and said the same words over and over. ``We have to do something.'' People in law enforcement, families of victims, members of the clergy again and again have said those words, ``We have to do something.''
That is my commitment today, to do something; in fact, to do everything I can as a Senator to press and prevent the next tragedy. As a former law enforcement official, and as a father, I cannot do less.
There is no single law, no simple solution that will be a cure-all. But there are sound, sensible steps we can take, some involving new laws, some involving better enforcement of existing laws. Our local and State police, for example, and Federal agencies need more resources and support.
We need to do something to effectively ban assault weapons. I am talking about weapons that are not designed for self-defense or hunting but, rather, for killing and maiming human beings, often as many as possible, as fast as possible. These are weapons that are civilian versions of military weapons. There is no reason any such weapon should be for sale today in America.
We need to do something also to ban high-capacity magazines, also involved in this mass murder. What real hunter uses or needs 30-round clips? What self-defense situation is served by them?
We need to do something to prevent mentally ill people and criminals from having firearms. I don't know whether better laws could have prevented the shooter in Newtown from getting his hands on the weapons he used, but we must look at what we can do to identify such people with serious mental problems before it is too late and provide intervention and treatment to take those weapons out of their hands.
Today, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has prevented nearly 1.8 million attempted purchases of firearms by mentally ill people or criminals. Clearly, that alone was not enough to prevent a number of tragic shootings. But I think we can all agree it is good those sales were not completed, and right now only 60 percent of gun sales involve a background check. We should ensure that all firearms sales involve a background check, including guns that are not sold by licensed dealers, and that those checks, wherever they are done, are thorough and comprehensive.
Nothing here means we should trample on the second amendment. The Supreme Court has spoken clearly in the Heller case that law-abiding Americans have constitutional rights to own firearms, whether for self- protection, hunting, competitive shooting or any other proper purpose. That is the law.
But the Supreme Court has also made clear the government can appropriately impose sensible regulations, as it can in many other areas of constitutional rights, on how firearms are used and purchased. Everyone would agree criminals and deranged people should not be able to get their hands on firearms.
On all these issues, we have to look for sensible common ground, rooted in common sense, and I believe there is room for people of good will to work together to find it.
Even as I say that, I am mindful that issues involving the second amendment rights and violence in the past fueled deep passions. Suspicion and passions have run deep and wide on both sides of this debate, including in this Chamber, and there is a lot of distrust to overcome.
I am here to keep faith with the people of Newtown who have grabbed my arm and said, ``We have to do something.'' That is my commitment. I will work with the President and my colleagues in the Senate regardless of party or geography. I will work with any organization that is willing to engage in a thoughtful, constructive discussion about what steps to take to avoid tragedy such as the Newtown shootings in the future.
I will work to find a solution to this crisis, because it is a crisis, and I will not be deterred by any organization or campaign that uses scare tactics or intimidation. Because there was nothing more frightening, nothing more horrifying, than looking into the eyes of the parents who came out of that firehouse in Sandy Hook who lost their babies last Friday. That is any parent's worst nightmare.
I know there are some who say we can never do anything about the problem of gun violence; that we are entrenched as a nation and so polarized as a political body that we will continue to wring our hands at every massacre and never take action. Yet sometimes events happen that so horrify our country and our fellow citizens that they change the nature of the discussion. They change the political ground under us. They are a tectonic shift, and I believe the massacre of the innocent children and their loving teachers in Newtown is exactly such an event.
Yesterday, some of my Senate colleagues had the courage to join this call for action and say publicly we cannot go on as before. I wish to thank, particularly, Senator Manchin and Senator Warner. Their heroic stance is an invitation, indeed a challenge, to every other Member of the Senate to join in this common effort to find common ground and at long last do something to stop the killing.
I also wish to thank, particularly, Senator Reid, our majority leader, for his leadership in calling for a meaningful and thoughtful debate on gun violence.
``We have to do something. We have to do something. We have to do something.'' That is what people in Newtown have beseeched me over and over. I believe the American people agree. This is our moment, and we are the people to do it. We can. I ask each of my colleagues to listen to those voices and to hear their own hearts.
I yield the floor.
