Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, since the failure of the gun bill on the floor of the Senate, I have tried to come to the floor every week or so to talk about the voices of the thousands of victims who have died from gun violence all across this country. About 30 people a day--not even counting suicides--die from gun violence. It is a travesty, it is a tragedy, it is a scourge on our country, and it is inflicting pain in our cities, in our suburbs, and the Senate and the House of Representatives--the most deliberative, the most representative bodies in the history of the world--are doing absolutely nothing about it.

If you want to know why it continues, we can give a long list of reasons. There is no one panacea to solve the problem of gun violence. It is about tightening our gun laws. It is about better mental health programming, more funding. It is about addressing a culture of violence. But it is also about a signal that we send here, a signal of complicity.

Our silence essentially sends a message to young men and women all across this country that we must be OK, we must be all right with epidemic levels of gun violence if the numbers continue to spiral upwards and we do absolutely nothing about it.

The statistics alone tell you we should step to the plate and change our laws, address the problem, give new resources. But seeing that those numbers and that data have not really moved the Senate to action, maybe the voices of the victims will.

A lot of attention here in the greater Washington area was paid to a seemingly random shooting without apparent motive in a suburban Maryland mall on Saturday, January 25.

A gunman came in, a 19-year-old with a shotgun, and sprayed bullets into a Zumiez store, which is a store that sells clothing and merchandise for skateboarders and snowboarders.

He killed Brianna Benlolo and Tyler Johnson, two people he apparently had no connection to.

Brianna was 21 years old, and she left behind a little 2-year-old boy Elijah. Her friends who worked at the mall with her said Brianna was ``really proud of her job.'' They spoke about how positive she was. One friend said ``she never seemed like she had any negativity.'' She left behind a little notebook that she had filled with fanciful drawings and phrases from pop culture. She was a really, really happy young woman who was raising a really, really happy little boy. Little 2-year-old Elijah is never going to get to see his mother again because of a seemingly random, unprovoked act of violence in another mass shooting.

Tyler Johnson had had a tough life. He had had a history of substance abuse. But he had been clean from drugs and alcohol for 2 years, and he had pretty much completely turned his life around. He was working, earning a paycheck at this store at the mall. But then, after work, he had become a board member at a local 12-step recovery house called the Serenity Center in Columbia, and he was now all about the business of mentoring other young people to make sure they would not fall into the same cycle of abuse of drugs and alcohol that he had.

The president of Serenity Center said:

I thought he was a remarkable young man. I don't see a lot

of young people stepping up like that. I just thought he was

an up-and-coming leader.

We are desperate in this country to have these kinds of role models such as Tyler Johnson--somebody who had struggled with dependence and had not only conquered it for himself but then had gone out and set himself about being a role model.

The difference that Tyler Johnson could have made--Tyler was 25 years old. Tyler was not even halfway through his life, and he had decided he was going to spend his life turning people's lives around. He had decided he was going to go back and get a degree that would help him become a counselor for young people.

We lost maybe 50 years of life transformations because Tyler Johnson is gone. Tyler Johnson was going to help turn kids' lives around, to get them back on the straight and narrow path like he did, but we do not get that benefit any longer because of another mass shooting at a Maryland mall.

When you read these obituaries and horrific newspaper articles about shooting after shooting, as I have since I became so personally connected to this issue in the wake of the shooting in Sandy Hook that took Dylan Hockley's life and Daniel Barden's life and Jesse Lewis's life and Ben Wheeler's life, you see how casual the violence is. Chad Oulson lost his life on January 13 of this year in Wesley Chapel, FL.

Chad was going to see a new movie. I have not seen it, but I have heard it is pretty good: ``Lone Survivor.'' He was texting his 3-year- old daughter, as the previews were playing. One of the movie patrons did not like the fact that Chad was texting during the previews of the movie. So he confronted Chad about it. They had an argument. They had an altercation. This guy left the theater to go get a security guard. When he returned, he came back alone. He took out a gun, and he shot Chad.

Chad was struck in the chest and died. His wife was hit in the hand and suffered injuries. An off-duty police officer and two nurses who happened to be in the theater ensured there were no more shots fired. They tried to resuscitate Chad until the paramedics arrived.

His family members said he was just a good all-around guy. He was the father of a beautiful little girl--a girl he was texting with at the time of his murder. ``You'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who didn't like him,'' somebody said. ``He was a friend to everybody, whoever he met.''

Two days later, in Dallas, TX, Trinidad Salazar was killed over a dispute about roof shingles. There was a dispute as to whether he owned these shingles or whether another guy owned the shingles, and this 38- year-old guy decided the best way to resolve the dispute over who owned these roof shingles was to shoot 33-year-old Trinidad Salazar. A .40 caliber Glock pistol was pulled out. He fired one warning shot into the ground, and then fired one shot directly into Trinidad, and Trinidad, at 30 years old, is no longer with us.

The casualness and the randomness of this gun violence makes it even harder to take. It is not that you can ever defend this kind of carnage. But when no one can see it coming, when it becomes the result of simple arguments over housing materials or nuisances in movie theaters or items of clothing, it just makes it even more absurd that we do not step to the plate and do something about it.

In 2013--the year after Sandy Hook happened--we paid even more attention to school shootings. So when one came across our transom, when we saw evidence or reports of shootings on TV, we all paid attention. Over the course of 2013, there were 28 school shootings. Madam President, 28 school shootings happened in 2013--the year after Sandy Hook. That is a lot.

We are 28 days into 2014, and in those 28 days we have had 11 school shootings. We had 28 in all of 2013. We have had 11 school shootings in just the first month of 2014 alone. We are on pace--we are on pace--to have over 120 school shootings this year.

On January 9, in Jackson, TN; on January 13, in New Haven, CT; on January 14, in Roswell, NM; on January 17, in Philadelphia, PA; on January 17, in Albany, GA; on January 20, at Widener University; on January 21, at Purdue University; again on January 21, at Wakefield Elementary, in Turlock, CA; on January 24, at South Carolina State University; on January 27, in Carbondale, IL; on January 28, in Honolulu, HI--luckily, each one of them--``luckily,'' that is a terrible word to use--in each one of these school shootings there have only been one or two or three people shot or injured. But it is

just a matter of time before there is another Sandy Hook. When you are having school shootings at the rate of one every two school days, it is just a matter of time before somebody continues to pull that trigger over and over or someone does not intervene as quickly as they intervened in these situations.

If we do not recognize the trend that is developing, if we do not at least send a message that the Senate and the House do not condone with our silence these acts, then it will just continue to happen.

I am not suggesting that there is a magical act of Congress that we can pass that is going to end gun violence in this country or, frankly, that is going to stop people with deep psychological illnesses from walking into malls and churches and schools occasionally and firing weapons.

But we can take steps to make sure it does not happen as often. We can take steps to make sure the carnage is not as bad or as significant when someone decides to walk into a crowded place and do that kind of damage. That is within our power. That is something on which Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree.

I will continue to come down to the floor to tell the stories of the voices of the victims until we can find the ability to reach across party lines and do something to at least send a message that the Senate stands against the developing, awful, terrible trend of mass violence in this country.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, it has been 1,406 days since the President signed into law the Affordable Care Act. Since that time, about 10 million Americans who have not had access to affordable insurance have gotten it and patients have been reempowered, along with their doctors, to take control of their own health care, taking power away from the insurance company which had run our medical lives for too long.

The Presiding Officer and I lived through dozens of votes in the House of Representatives to repeal the bill, as the Senate saw as well, but absolutely no genuine effort to replace the health care bill. I was sitting in the Chair yesterday when one of our colleagues, Senator Hatch, came to the floor to talk about a new proposal--I would probably argue the first proposal from Republicans in 1,406 days to actually talk about what their vision--what Republicans' vision--for health care reform would be. This is just a framework, not a bill, that has been suggested by our colleagues, Senator Hatch and Senator Coburn and Senator Burr. So I wanted to come to the floor to talk about the implications of this framework for affordability and patient protections all across this country.

First of all, I give some credit to our colleagues because it has been 1,406 days of complaints, of politics, of obfuscation, of obstruction. So for the first time we are at least beginning to see what the Republican vision is for the future of health care in this country. Although we don't have a bill--all we have at this point is a framework--it is a pretty scary future because the proposal from our Republican colleagues would dramatically increase the cost of health care for millions of Americans and would put the insurance companies back in charge of our health care.

So for a few minutes I wish to talk in real terms about what this proposal will actually do for health care in this country. I only have a few minutes, so it is hard to go through the litany of backward steps we would take were we to adopt the proposal that has been laid out by a couple of our very brave Republican colleagues.

But the first thing it would do is it would reinstate the fact that being a woman for decades in this country was considered to be a preexisting condition. The health care reform bill says very simply there can be no difference in the amount of money one pays for health care based on gender. The facts are plain: Women have historically paid 50 percent more in terms of health care costs than men have across this country; $1 billion more is the total amount of money women have paid more than men simply because insurance companies believe that being a woman is a preexisting condition. That is no longer the law of the land. Women pay the same rate as men. There is no difference based on gender. But that would be eliminated by this plan. Once again, being a woman could be considered a preexisting condition.

Second, annual limits on the ability to recoup the cost of your health care from your insurance company would be reimposed. The health care bill says: Listen. It isn't fair that you buy an insurance policy, and when you get very sick, you are told at some point midway through the year your insurance is up. That is not real insurance. The idea of insurance is that we all pool our risks together, and then if one of us, through no fault of our own, gets sick, we actually get those insurance bills paid.

The Affordable Care Act says there can't be any more of those annual limits, but the proposal from our Republican friends says that annual limits can come back from insurance companies. To someone such as Debra Gauvin from Connecticut, who had a $20,000 limit and who was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer and hit her limit about halfway through the year and then incurred about $18,000 of additional costs, causing her to basically forgo treatment, that was a painful reality of an insurance plan not delivering on insurance simply because she got so sick she had big costs. That would once again be the reality. The Republican plan would once again allow for annual limits.

Our friends talk about the fact that they address the issue of preexisting conditions, but they don't. They truly don't. Because all their plan says is that if you switch plans and you have no gap, the new plan has to cover whatever illness you may have. But that is not how life works. There are 89 million Americans, in an average year, who have at least a 1-month gap in coverage. That 1-month gap in coverage under the Republican plan--the one shown to us in a basic framework-- would allow for preexisting condition discrimination to once again be the law.

Betty Berger, one of my constituents, had insurance her entire life except for basically about a 1- or 2-month period of time where her husband was switching jobs. During that time, their son was diagnosed with cancer. The new insurance company at her husband's new employer wouldn't cover the preexisting condition, and the Bergers lost everything. They lost their home, they lost their savings, and their lives were financially ruined.

The Affordable Care Act ends that nightmare for families. Fifty percent of bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical debt. The Republican plan does not fix the preexisting condition discrimination. All it says is, if you don't have any change, any gap in your coverage, then the new insurance company has to cover your preexisting condition. But for millions of families that is not how life works.

Lastly, although the Republican plan does acknowledge the basic underlying wisdom of the Affordable Care Act is right, in that the best way to get coverage to people is to give them a tax credit with which to go buy private insurance--that is the foundation of the Affordable Care Act, and the Republican alternative that our colleagues introduced basically adopts that as their framework for expanding coverage as well--it is at a much lesser subsidy rate, with much greater tax consequences to Americans than the Affordable Care Act has in it.

For instance, the Republican alternative says, if you hit 300 percent of the poverty level, that is it, no more subsidy. Well, 300 percent sounds like a lot. Three hundred is a big number. But the poverty level is pretty measly in this country. If someone is making 300 percent of the poverty level, they are making $34,000 a year. I don't know about the State of the Presiding Officer, but in Connecticut it is hard to put food on the table on a consistent basis at $34,000 a year. Then to have no help from the government to buy insurance essentially means we will have a huge class of people making $30,000 to $40,000 a year who under the Affordable Care Act are getting helped by insurance but whom under this alternative plan will get no help.

But here is how it is even worse. The Republican alternative we have seen this framework on says that one of the ways we are going to pay for this is by taxing people for the health care they are getting. Right now, if someone gets health care coverage through their employer, which 150 million Americans do, they get to essentially exclude that money from taxation. They get those benefits in pretax dollars. The Republicans have said: Well, we are going to allow that to happen but only for about 65 percent of your benefit. So just under half of your health care is now going to be taxable. That is a massive tax increase on the people of this country.

We can debate whether there is policy wisdom in limiting the tax exclusion of health care, but let us just admit that if you are going to fund your proposal based on eliminating the tax exclusion of employer-sponsored benefits to employees, then you are dramatically raising taxes on middle-class Americans all across this country.

So while I give a lot of credit to the Senators who have put this framework out there, because it is the first time we have seen any alternative, it is a pretty miserable alternative for consumers all across this country who have finally for the first time, because of the Affordable Care Act, gotten access to affordable insurance and for countless more Americans who have been insured and who finally feel as though all of the tricks and the gimmicks they have seen from insurance companies, such as excluding people from coverage because of a preexisting condition or putting an annual limit on their coverage, that those days are over.

So as we go into the debate about the effective implementation of the Affordable Care Act and as we talk about these alternatives that are now being promoted, it is important we do that with eyes wide open. Nobody on our side of the aisle who supported the health care bill is going to tell you it is perfect. No one on our side of the aisle is going to defend every step of the implementation, but it is changing the lives of millions of Americans. It is reducing the overall health care expenditure of this government, and it is putting Americans back in charge of their health care.

Now is not the time to be discussing going back to the good old days when millions of Americans were left out of the rolls and the ranks of those who are insured and insurance companies dictated the day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month health care that is so critical to the lives of middle-class families.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, when the history books are written about those who fought hardest against poverty, who stood up for those with no voice, with very little power and an increasingly unfair economy, LBJ and his war on poverty will be a few chapters in that book. Senator Tom Harkin will occupy a pretty big place in that story as well. I salute him for spending the time to talk about this long fight on poverty this country has waged, and still needs to wage, and salute the role he has played. It is an inspiration to many of us who have sought to try to stand in his shoes and in his place.

I wish to talk about the same subject, because over the holidays I had the chance to spend a day in New Haven, CT, with a 40-year-old homeless man who up until last spring had been employed for the better part of the last 20 years. But as has happened to millions of Americans over the last several years, this man--who I will call for today's purposes Nick--lost his job.

Nick has had it tough his whole life. His father was a drug addict who got Nick addicted to crack when he was 13 years old. He was born into a cycle of drug use and violence and poverty that is far too prevalent in places like New Haven and Bridgeport and cities across this country. But despite the odds stacked against him, Nick graduated from high school, he built a career for himself around sales. Now, after 20 years of working and 40 years of fighting the odds, Nick for the first time in his life is homeless.

So I spent the day with Nick, seeking shelter from the cold, using the public library to apply for jobs, attending meetings that have helped keep him clean and sober. Aside from receiving the support he needs for his health issues, Nick spent most of that day just looking for work. He wants to work. He desperately wants to get back on the job, and he is hopeful that one day he will find work soon. But he is caught right now in this vicious downward spiral of homelessness. He can't find a job without a home. He fills out dozens of job applications, but with his address being a homeless shelter, he doesn't compete very well with other applicants. But of course, as Nick tells it, how can he get a home without a job? He is caught, he is stuck, like millions of other Americans.

One of the things that keeps Nick from starving, other than the food and the shelter he gets from Columbus House and the local soup kitchen, is the $100 he used to get--until last week--in unemployment insurance. Without that measly $100 a week, things get pretty dire, right now as we speak, for Nick.

The fact is while unemployment benefits make homelessness a little more manageable for a guy like Nick, these emergency funds are often the only thing standing between a family where their primary breadwinner is out of work and a life on the streets. It is during a long stretch of unemployment where these meager benefits become the only way a family can continue to pay the mortgage or the only way a young guy can continue to keep up with the rent.

If we don't restore unemployment benefits now, tens of thousands more people will be living on the street. That is not hyperbole. That is reality. Then they will be captured in that same catch-22 of homelessness: No job without a home. No home without a job.

Like Nick, there are 28 million Americans who have needed emergency unemployment compensation since 2008. These Americans aren't some distant, unfamiliar group of people. They are our friends. They are our neighbors. They are people who have worked their entire lives and want to get back to work again.

I recently sat down with about a half dozen long-term unemployed individuals in Bridgeport, CT, and we see the pain and agony on their faces as they recount their daily hours-long quest to find work, applying to hundreds of jobs, making dozens of phone calls, and coming up empty. There is something almost dehumanizing about that effort to seek work, to prove your worth, and to come up empty time after time again.

One guy I met, Ronny, sat behind a desk his entire career. He worked his entire life in a white-collar job, and he said he would take any job. He would sweep floors. He would do anything just to get back to work. He is not lazy. He is not gaming the system. He is just one of millions who would rather do any job at all than be unemployed.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say they are opposed to extending unemployment benefits because they want to get back to normal with regard to unemployment insurance. But that reasoning totally ignores the reality of this recession. Unlike the recessions in 1982 and 1991 and 2001, the unemployment rate has not fallen after the end of the recession with respect to people who are long-term unemployed. The rate of those unemployed for more than 26 weeks is at the highest today than it has been in 60 years. There are now three unemployed workers for every one job opening, compared to two or fewer workers per job opening in the wake of previous recessions. This just isn't a normal recession. There are more people out of work for longer periods of time than at any time in most of our lives.

If you were in the top 10 percent of earners prior to this recession, things are pretty much back to normal. In 2012, the top 10 percent of earners took home about half of all income in the United States. Those people have recovered. During that time corporate profits were also at an all-time high. For those people and for those entities, things are back to normal. Maybe that is why some Republicans think it is right to bring unemployment insurance back to prerecession norms. But it is not.

One of the hallmarks of this abnormal recession is the number of people who become unemployed and stay unemployed. Forty-three percent of the unemployed people in Connecticut are long-term unemployed, don't have a job, and have been out of a job for months and years.

Rebecca, who lives in Connecticut, emailed my office and she said:

I am 34 years old. For the first time since I was 16, I am

unemployed. I am an attorney, and I apply to 20-40 jobs per

week.

Another woman wrote to my office:

My husband has been out of work for 52 weeks. He spent 30+

years in the banking industry. His last position was as a

regional director of retirement services.

Frank from Meriden, CT, writes:

I have worked all my life--43 years. I was laid off in 2009

and again in 2013. In both instances, I dedicated my

unemployed time searching to secure a job. I'd prefer to work

as long as I am capable and with your assistance in extending

the EUC program, I may at least have a fighting chance of

securing employment. Please afford me the opportunity to

continue the employment search without the added burden of

discontinued benefits.

But we shouldn't only extend benefits because it is the right thing to do. It is also the economically smart thing to do. The Congressional Budget Office tells us that 200,000 jobs are going to be lost this year if we don't restore emergency unemployment benefits. In the week since unemployment benefits lapsed, $400 million has been drained from States' economies.

You see, when we give people support during their time of need when they are out of work, they spend that money--and they spend it quickly. Extending unemployment benefits offers the best bang for the buck we can offer our economy. Every dollar we put into UI returns as much as $1.90 to the economy. CBO says that extending unemployment benefits through 2014 will boost the GDP of this Nation by 0.2 percent. One action of this Congress can boost GDP by 0.2 percent.

No matter what we do, it is still going to be a long road back for those who have been unemployed for 1 year or more, who are going to face discrimination based on their age or based simply on the fact that they have been unemployed for a long period of time.

Just giving them benefits does not magically put them back to work. But the most remarkable thing that you find when you talk to these individuals is that while they are frustrated, their spirit is not broken. Every time somebody sheds a tear to me, recounting their ordeal of unemployment, their story always ends with a hopefulness that employment is just around the corner.

Nick is that kind of guy too. He knows that things are going to get better for him. But as we walked around New Haven in the cold for 10 hours last week, and we talked virtually the entire time, he wondered whether anybody down here truly cared about the dehumanizing existence of being without a job and being without a home. He wondered why Congress would turn its back on him and the millions of others who have been clobbered by the worst recession in our lifetime.

I have kept in touch with Nick in the days since I spent the day with him. Just yesterday he sent me an email. He said:

I am sitting right now in the Department of Labor office,

updating my resume. Chris, I have not had any luck yet with

employment but I will keep trudging, just as I am doing in

pretty much every aspect of my life. I know it will get

better as I continue to strengthen my faith and stay on a

straight and narrow path. As long as I continue to do those

two things the sky is the limit for me, Chris.

Nick believes that things are going to get better for him. Millions of other Americans who have been out of work for 50, 100 weeks, still believe that salvation is around the corner. All they ask is that we extend some modicum of support to them so they can make that winnowing dream a reality.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I hope we will confirm Janet Yellen later today.

I come to the floor for a few minutes to do what I have done most weeks since the failure of this Senate to pass commonsense gun legislation in the spring of 2013, to talk about the number of Americans who have lost their lives due to gun violence. That number stands today at 12,041. Over 12,000 people have died at the hands of gun violence since December 14, which of course is the day in which 20 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds and 6 teachers and professionals who were protecting them lost their lives in Newtown, CT.

This is probably the last time we will have the chance to display this particular number because the Web site which has been totalling this is going to stop doing so. It is probably a good thing in this respect: Once that 1 became a crooked number, we weren't going to have room on this poster any longer; and at some point in the middle of next year, the 1 would click up to a 2 and we would be over 20,000 people killed due to guns. Frankly, this doesn't even count the suicides. This is just the people who have died as a result of gun homicides, and the number just goes up and up at a rate which is hard to comprehend.

So I wish to speak for a few minutes about a few of the representative victims we have seen across the country in the last year, which make up just a small subset of the 12,000 people, and I hope maybe one of these days it will inspire this place to action.

I was at the swearing in of the new mayor of New Haven on New Year's Day. Toni Harp is the first female mayor of New Haven, the 50th mayor of New Haven, and she will inherit a city being absolutely ravaged by gun violence--20 gun homicides in the last year and 67 shootings. Each one of them hurts, but the last one was particularly devastating.

Javier Martinez died on December 28, 2013. Javier attended a local high school focused on learning about and protecting the environment, Common Ground High School. He was described as one of the most outstanding participants in the 20-year history of a program put on through the school whereby kids spent part of their summer on Block Island, a little island in between Connecticut and Rhode Island, where they work to eliminate invasive species and spread the environmental gospel to visitors to that small island.

He was beloved by his family and by his friends. He was thinking of becoming an arborist or environmental scientist. His community--in particular, his pretty, sleepy neighborhood in which this shooting happened--has been absolutely torn apart through the loss of Javier-- Bebo, as he was called by his grandparents.

He is one of 20 people in New Haven, CT, who were lost. Twelve of the 20 were under 30 years old. Eleven of them were men; 17 of them were African American. That is the story in New Haven. It is young African American males who are dying almost every week as part of the 12,041.

Just a couple of months earlier, John Allen Read died in Texas due to a gunshot wound. What makes John Allen Reed exceptional is that he was 5 years old. He is one of dozens of accidental gun deaths happening all across this country.

He and his 6-month-old sibling were in the care of a regular baby sitter, but a baby sitter who feared for her safety so she carried a gun with her. But she left the gun on a table and fell asleep. The 5- year-old got the gun. When she woke up to try to find the kids, she found John dead with a fatal gunshot wound.

We heard the stories all throughout 2013. I don't know whether statistically there were more in 2013 than in previous years. But because we don't require much if any training before buying a gun, we have young baby sitters leaving guns unattended with these absolutely devastating results.

How about 4 months before that in Seattle, where Molly Conley, a 15- year-old, a great goalie on her high school team, a straight-A student, was killed while she was walking back with friends after celebrating her recent birthday at a sleepover. Detectives believe a shooter opened fire on Molly Conley and her group of friends.

Her nickname was ``4.0'' because she was such a good student. ``She always smiled. She gave people smiles, and she was joyful and kind. She had a generous spirit,'' said Molly's mother.

Molly, John, and Javier are just three of the voices of victims we need to start talking about on the floor, because if the statistics don't seem to be moving people to action, maybe the stories will.

As I hope we will this year, let's be realistic about what we can and can't do. I have come here every week to talk about the stories of the people who have died at the hands of guns. I understand there is no law that is going to completely eradicate gun violence, and I understand that there is no one solution at hand which will have a radical transformation overnight.

I believe this is about gun laws. But I also understand it is about better mental health treatment. I also understand it is about a culture of violence. I also understand it is about a sense of hopelessness felt by a lot of kids in poor neighborhoods which leads them to violence as a way of solving common, everyday disputes.

So I am ready on the floor of the Senate to have a real, sober, dispassionate argument about what we can do together this year to try to make sure this number in 2014 is just a little bit lower than it was in 2013.

With that in mind, I will leave us with this one last story, and that is the story of Zina Daniel.

Zina Daniel took out a restraining order on her husband after years of violence and abuse. Police were reportedly called to this home dozens of times. Her husband was upset about that restraining order, and knowing that he couldn't get a gun at a retailer because he wouldn't pass a background check, he went online to Armslist. Within hours he found a seller who would supply to him a .40 caliber Glock handgun, which he picked up in a McDonald's parking lot for $500 cash. The next day, he went into Zina's workplace, and he murdered her and two other women. He injured four others.

Zina's brother said this:

I'm a gun owner, a hunter and a member of the National

Rifle Association. I believe in the Second Amendment, but I

also believe in sensible gun laws. I've seen how devastating

gun violence can be. And I know that Radcliffe never should

have been able to buy a gun online without a background

check. A background check would have saved my sister's life.

I don't know what we will be able to get done this year. I don't know if there are 60 votes in the Senate for the kind of expansion of background checks that many of us, including Zina's brother, would like to see. But let's not let the whole year go by without at least some attempt among Senators of good will on both sides of the aisle, so that when this number does come back up at the end of 2014, it is just a little bit lower.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, as a longtime advocate for youth in the juvenile justice system during my time in the Connecticut State Legislature and in Congress, I congratulate my home State of Connecticut on new evidence that its major juvenile justice reforms over the past 10 years have been a resounding success. These reforms are based on the principle that children are fundamentally different from adults, and they should not be criminalized just like adult offenders. While other States have begun to recognize this principle and put it into practice, my home State has led the way. I am proud to note that Connecticut has achieved the largest reduction in its confinement of minors of any state in the United States over the last decade.

Like many other States, Connecticut adopted tough-on-crime policies that drastically increased the number of children locked up through its juvenile court system in the 1990s and early 2000s. But in the mid- 2000s, the State recognized that these policies were ineffective, costly, and worst of all, ended up harming children more than helping them. Connecticut began to reform its juvenile system, passing a law in 2005 that prohibited the detention of youth for violating a court order in any status offense case.

Then, in 2007, Connecticut passed Raise the Age, a law that has ended the prosecution of most 16- and 17-year-old teenagers in the adult criminal system and returned them to the juvenile system where they belong. Not an easy victory, Raise the Age took more than a decade of efforts by children and families, youth advocates, and State legislators to pass and fully implement.

Together with other State reforms, the status offense change and Raise the Age have led Connecticut to cut its rate of juvenile incarceration by 60 percent between 2001 and 2011. This drop-- documented in a report by the National Juvenile Justice Network and the Texas Public Policy Foundation entitled ``The Comeback and Coming-from- Behind States: An Update on Youth Incarceration in the United States'' and released just this week--is the largest in the Nation. More than any other State, Connecticut has succeeded in locking up fewer children and turning to more effective policies instead, such as relying increasingly on community-based treatment and cutting back on law enforcement referrals for school discipline issues.

One of the key architects of the Raise the Age effort in Connecticut was Liz Ryan, a nationally known and leading juvenile justice advocate. Liz is the president and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice, an organization she founded in 2005, around the same time that advocates in Connecticut first formed the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance, CTJJA. Liz consulted with the founders of CTJJA to mobilize the Raise the Age campaign, and our State was one of the first to receive her expertise and support.

Throughout her career, Liz has worked tirelessly to build and strengthen the juvenile justice field by guiding and supporting other advocates and organizations. She serves on the National Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Coalition, cochairs the Act 4 Juvenile Justice campaign, and serves on the working groups for the National Girls Institute and the National Center for Youth in Custody. Along with these advocacy organizations, Liz has worked closely with us in Congress to raise the profile of juvenile justice issues and push for greater reform.

Unfortunately for the many who have worked with Liz over the years, she is now stepping down from her current role. While she is irreplaceable and will certainly remain involved in the advocacy field, I congratulate her on the work she has accomplished over the course of several decades. On behalf of those of us in Connecticut, I also thank Liz for her commitment to our State's reform efforts. As was said best by the director of CTJJA, Abby Anderson, ``If movements have best friends, Liz is the best friend of the Connecticut juvenile justice reform movement.''

Connecticut's success in improving how it treats its youth is an example for the rest of the country. More and more evidence shows that my home State should be a model for other States as they look to reduce costs and improve outcomes for children. I will continue to highlight Connecticut's success and to expand its best practices at the Federal level so that we can help support other States make these same commonsense and humane reforms.

I thank my good friend, the senior Senator from Connecticut. Our understanding is that many States require insurers to check their policies against the master list on an ongoing basis in order to ensure they have accurate information about deceased individuals whom they insure. Furthermore, State treasurers, State comptrollers, and credit bureaus all use the Death Master File for important purposes and need continued access. We certainly do not want to halt these processes or stand in the way of compliance with State law. As such, I am pleased to join you in urging the Social Security Administration and the Commerce Department to both work closely with key stakeholders during the transition period and to use the flexibility we believe they already possess to ensure uninterrupted legitimate access to the Death Master File. State governments, too, should be flexible throughout this transition as insurers under their jurisdictions seek to comply with these new Federal provisions.

Madam President, I come to the floor for a few minutes, as I have most weeks, to mark a new number. That number is 11,584--the number of gun deaths America has experienced over the last year, since December 14 of last year. That date is burned in the memories of those of us in Connecticut and across the Nation because that was the date 26 people--20 little 6- and 7-year-olds and 6 teachers and educators who were there to protect them--died in Sandy Hook. We recognized the 1- year mark of that shooting this weekend. Almost 12,000 people have died at the hands of guns since then.

I have tried to come to the floor of the Senate in the months since to remind folks that these victims have stories and to give voice to these victims. I will share a few more today.

We were all gripped just a few days ago by news of another school shooting. Not too far from Columbine, Arapahoe saw another very troubled young man walk in with a shotgun and essentially open fire, apparently because of a grievance he had with his debate coach. Caught in the crossfire was a 17-year-old girl, Claire Davis.

Claire was described as outgoing, athletic, and an excellent student. According to reports, she loved horses and recently placed second in an equestrian competition. Another student said Claire is ``one of the nicest people I've met at Arapahoe'' High School. Claire, 17 years old, survived, but she is still in a coma today just because she was in the wrong place at her high school--a place where everyone expects to be able to go to school in safety. She isn't on this number yet because she survived, but her life is changed forever because of yet another school shooting.

School shootings now seem to pop up on the news on a weekly basis. But it is not just these school shootings where mass violence takes place. Now you can pick up most local papers every month and see evidence of a new mass shooting.

In Manchester, CT, on December 7 of this year, 41-year-old John Lynn shot Brittany Mills, 28, Kamesha Mills, 23, and Artara Benson, 46, before killing himself in a quadruple murder. He had a history of domestic violence. Police haven't completely sorted out exactly what happened, but all four of them are dead, marking the eighth homicide stemming from intimate partner violence in Connecticut since January 1, 2013.

Just days before, in Alma, AR, Tim Adams, believed to be in his early fifties, before killing himself killed his 4-month-old grandson, 4- year-old granddaughter, and Michael Williams, the 31-year-old boyfriend of his daughter, in the midst of what seemed to be a pretty simple argument about his daughter's court date that exploded into an episode of mass violence that took the lives of a 4-month-old, a 4-year-old, a 31-year-old, and then, as many of these episodes do, the life of the shooter himself.

These episodes of mass shootings are not just happening in schools, movie theaters, or places of worship; they are happening in backyards in Alma, AR, and they are happening in apartment complexes in Manchester, CT. And this body, in the 360-some-odd days since December 14, has done absolutely nothing about it. The survivors of these incidents of violence are the stories we don't talk about.

I have come down here to tell the story today of Claire Davis, Brittany

Mills, Kamesha Mills, Artara Benson, Tim Adams, Chayson Williams, Kierra Adams, and Michael Williams. They all died by gunshots. They left behind children, parents, and neighbors who are scarred for life.

Psychologists will tell you that when a shooting occurs, there are at least 10 people who experience life-altering trauma. What we know is that episodes of trauma don't just affect you up here; they affect your entire body. We have new developing evidence which shows that children who experience multiple episodes of trauma in their lives--and they don't have to be as grave or serious as a shooting--are physiologically affected for the rest of their lives. People who witness trauma and experience trauma die earlier than people who don't, never mind have episodes related to post-traumatic stress that stay with them for the rest of their lives. So the spillover, the ripple effects of these 11,000 deaths, frankly, represents a number that can't even fit on a chart like this.

There is no simple solution. Sometimes it seems as if the only thing we come down here and talk about is stricter gun laws. And I don't believe there is any reason why we don't require background checks for guns before they are purchased or we don't just simply say that these dangerous assault weapons should stay out of the hands of people who aren't in law enforcement or the military. But that is not the beginning and end of the conversation.

This young man, Karl Pierson, who walked into Arapahoe High School started shooting the place up because he was upset about his place on the debate team. He apparently had a history of disciplinary incidents at that school, but he clearly had some serious issues of mental illness not identified and treated. Of course, the same thing can be said of Jared Lee Loughner and Adam Lanza and this long list of mass shooters across this country. We absolutely have to put more resources into our mental health system.

I appreciate my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have said: We are not willing to go with you when it comes to background checks or assault weapons, but we will work with you on mental health funding.

In order to do that, we actually have to put the money behind the system. We have closed down 4,000 in-patient mental health beds in this country over the last 5 years. Why? Because the Federal Government is pulling funding from the very programs that actually support increased mental health resources which can identify these individuals before they perpetrate incidents of mass violence. So there is an illusion of bipartisan support around the issue of mental health even while we have these outstanding disagreements on gun laws. Yet there really isn't agreement because when you are fighting over the budget, when Republicans are calling for massive cuts to programs such as Medicaid or the mental health block grant, then they are undermining the very programs that actually identify and help people such as Karl Pierson or Adam Lanza.

Enough is enough. I will be down here after the holiday, and that number will be over 12,000--12,000 individuals, many of them little girls and boys like those represented on this chart: Daniel Barden and Jesse Lewis and Dylan Hockley.

Back in Newtown, out of respect for the families who are tired from 365 days of grieving, there was no big public remembrance on Saturday. There was a small private ceremony which I had the honor of attending at St. Rose Church, where so many of the children were parishioners.

As tired as that community is, they also were bewildered, in Newtown, because they went up to the State capitol in Connecticut and got laws passed that will prevent these kinds of episodes of mass violence in the future, but they came down to Washington and, while they got a lot of meetings, they got absolutely no progress--zilch, zip, nada.

As we head into 2014, I hope the memory of these little boys and girls will not fade as we get beyond the 1-year mark of Sandy Hook. My hope is people will start paying attention to this number, creeping up to 12,500 deaths, and will recognize that while this number simply represents the number of people who have died, there are all sorts of people out there such as Claire Davis, who survived, but survived gun incidents that will cripple them for the rest of their lives, and there are, frankly, hundreds of thousands of more people who surround these incidents of violence who have their lives changed forever because of the trauma they experienced.

All of these victims, whether they were killed in the incident or were part of the collateral damage, have voices, voices that should command this place sometime soon to action.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after I finish speaking, Senator Blumenthal be allowed to speak.

Mr. President, this Saturday we are going to mark the 1- year anniversary of the shooting in Sandy Hook, CT, in which 20 little 6- and 7-year-old boys and girls lost their lives, as well as 6 adults who worked in that school who were charged with protecting them.

Senator Blumenthal and I have come down to the floor today to offer some thoughts as we reflect on the 365 days that have passed since the most horrific mass shooting that most of us have ever seen in our lifetimes.

I think back a lot on that day--being in the Sandy Hook firehouse as the parents realized that their sons and daughters were not coming back from that school. One of the things I remember about that day is getting an awful lot of phone calls from my colleagues from all around the country, Senators and Congressmen who represented places such as Columbine and Aurora and Virginia Tech and Tucson. They all called because they had been through this before and they just wanted to offer their condolences and a little bit of advice on how a community can try to get through these awful, tragic, shattering incidents.

I sort of thought that day how awful it was that there were that many colleagues, that many representatives from across the country who could call and give me advice. What a tragedy it is that we are amassing this bank of expertise across the Nation on how to respond to mass shootings. It speaks to how far and wide the carnage and the devastation are from these mass shootings that are occurring now it seems almost on a weekly or monthly basis somewhere around the country. It is not getting better; it is getting worse.

In 1949 a guy by the name of Howard Unruh went through the streets of his town of East Camden, NJ, firing shots indiscriminately such that he killed 13 people. It was the Nation's first mass shooting. Now we have, unfortunately, had a lot of mass shootings since that first one in 1949.

But here is what is stunning: Of all of the mass shootings that have taken place since 1949, half of them took place from 1949 to 2007 and the other half have taken place in the last 6 years. Something has gone wrong. Something has changed. The problem is that it is not this place. We are approaching the 1-year mark of the school shooting in Sandy Hook, and it will be a week of mourning, but here in the Senate it should also be a week of embarrassment. It should be a week of shame that after 1 year passing since 20 little boys and girls were gunned down in a 5-minute hail of furious bullets, the Senate and the House of Representatives have done nothing to try to prevent these kinds of mass atrocities in the future.

I come down here today not just to challenge this place to act but to tell you a little bit about what I have learned in the last year. I have learned a lot, but I want to distill it down to two pretty simple things I have learned.

I did not work on the issue of gun violence when I was a Member of the House of Representatives, in part because my corner of Connecticut did not have tremendously high levels of gun deaths. Now it is central to my mission as a Senator.

What I have learned over the last year is that despite all the rhetoric we hear from the gun lobby, when you change gun laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and to take dangerous military-style weapons and ammunition off of the streets, guess what happens. Communities become safer. The data tells us this.

Since 1998 the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has blocked more than 2 million gun sales to prohibited purchasers. That is up to 2 million criminals--people with criminal histories who should not have bought a gun--who were prohibited from buying a gun. The background check system works but for the fact that only about 60 percent of gun purchases actually go through the system because more and more guns are being bought in online sales, more and more guns are being bought online, and more and more guns are being bought at gun shows.

We know background checks work because we have stopped 2 million people who would be prohibited from owning guns because they have a history of domestic abuse or serious felonies or mental illness. Two million times we have stopped those people from getting guns.

Second, we can compare what happens in States with near universal background check systems versus States that have looser laws. I will give you one statistic, for instance. In States that require a background check for every handgun sale, there is a 38-percent reduction in the number of women who are shot to death by intimate partners. Deaths from domestic violence are almost 40-percent less in States that have near universal background checks.

The same data exists for assault weapons as well. In 1994 we passed the assault weapons ban. Over the next 9 years crimes committed with assault weapons declined by two-thirds.

There are legitimate arguments that there are other factors that contributed to that decline, but certainly a portion of that decline is connected to the restriction on assault weapons. Thirty-seven percent of police departments reported a noticeable increase in criminals' use of assault weapons since the 1994 Federal ban expired.

When it comes to these high-capacity magazine clips, we do not need the data that is out there because common sense tells us that if somebody decides to do mass damage with a high-powered weapon, they are going to do less damage if they only have 10 bullets in a clip rather than 30. Adam Lanza in Sandy Hook Elementary School got off 154 bullets and killed 20 children and 6 adults in less than 5 minutes. In Tucson, a 74-year-old retired Army colonel and a 61-year-old woman were able to subdue the shooter when he went to change cartridges. In Aurora, the rampage essentially stopped when James Holmes went to switch cartridges. When you have to reload multiple times, there are multiple opportunities for these mass shootings to stop. We should do things to make sure the shootings never begin in the first place, but the carnage is much worse when these madmen are walking into shopping plazas, movie theaters, and schools with 30-round clips and 100-round drums.

But here is the second thing I have learned. I learned this as well over the last year. I have learned about the amazing ability of good to triumph over evil even when this place does not act to change the laws. I have learned that despite the evil of those 5 minutes in Sandy Hook, the community of Newtown has amazingly found a way over and over to bring so much beauty and goodness to essentially cover up and drown out that horror. I have seen these kids' memories become the inspiration for literally thousands of acts of generosity and kindness.

Daniel Barden was a genetically compassionate little kid. He was that kid who always sat with the kid in school who did not have anybody sitting next to them on the bus or in the classroom. When his parents would take him to the supermarket, they would be all the way to their car with their groceries, and they would look back and Daniel would still be at the door holding open the grocery store door for people who were leaving.

His parents started a Facebook page that challenges people to engage in little, small acts of kindness in Daniel's memory. It had about 40,000 likes the last time I had checked, and the stories are endless-- a woman who bought coffee and doughnuts for a firehouse in New York State; a Missouri woman who helped restock a food pantry in Daniel's honor; a woman in Illinois who paid for a stranger's meal and just wrote ``Love from Daniel Barden'' on the bill.

Jack Pinto was a very active 6-year-old boy. He enjoyed playing sports of all kinds. He was buried in his New York Giants jersey. His parents, Dean and Tricia Pinto, have raised money and put some of their own money in to pay for hundreds of children all around the country to have access to the same kind of opportunity to play sports that Jack had, despite the fact that their families might not have the resources the Pintos do.

Jessica Rekos loved animals. She loved whales and horses most, so her parents started a foundation, the Jessica Rekos Foundation, and they have provided yearlong scholarships for horseback riding lessons for students who would not otherwise have the resources to be able to have the opportunity to enjoy horses in the same way Jessica did.

This week an effort is under way in Newtown and across the Nation to inspire people to every day do a different act of kindness as a way to pay tribute to the 1-year anniversary. These charities that have sprung up in the wake of Newtown are doing amazing work to change people's lives--just the small acts of kindness that maybe we all do in trying to pay tribute to the memory of those kids and those adults. That makes a difference.

Charitable acts and changes in behavior--they are necessary although insufficient responses to the scourge of gun violence that plagues our Nation.

This place has to change the laws. Do something because you do not want to be next. You do not want to be sitting on a train station platform, as I was on December 14, when you get a call that 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 kids or adults have been gunned down in your State. You certainly do not want to get that call when you had a chance, but you did not take it, to do something to prevent it.

I got calls that day from my colleagues all across the country because there are not many corners of the Nation that have not been touched by gun violence. Some 11,000 people have been killed by guns since December 14 of last year. When one person is killed, psychologists tell us there are 10 other people who sustain life- altering trauma as a result of that shooting. So just imagine when 26 kids and adults die in a small community.

So I wish to leave you not with my words but with the words of a mother from Sandy Hook who represents the scope of the trauma that has been the reality for Sandy Hook for the last 365 days. Sandy Hook is recovering but very slowly. The charities and the acts of kindness, they make a difference, but there is a lot of head shaking in that community as to why this place has not risen to the occasion, shown the same type of courage those families have and done something to change the reality of everyday and exceptional mass violence across this country.

Here is what this mother writes. These are her words in an open letter:

In addition to the tragic loss of her playmates, friends,

and teachers, my first grader suffers from PTSD. She was in

the first room by the entrance to the school. Her teacher was

able to gather the children into the tiny bathroom inside the

classroom. There she stood, with 14 of her classmates and her

teacher, all of them crying. You see, she heard what was

happening on the other side of the wall. She heard

everything. She was sure that she was going to die that day

and did not want to die before Christmas. Imagine what this

must have been like. She struggles nightly with nightmares,

difficulty falling asleep, and being afraid to go anywhere in

her own home. At school she becomes withdrawn, crying daily,

covering her ears when it gets too loud and waiting for this

to happen again. She is 6.

And we are furious. We are furious that 26 families must

suffer with grief so deep and so wide that it is

unimaginable. We are furious that the innocence and safety of

my children's lives have been taken. Furious that someone had

access to the type of weapon used in this massacre. Furious

that gun makers make ammunition with such high rounds and our

government does nothing to stop them. Furious that the ban on

assault weapons was carelessly left to expire. Furious that

lawmakers let the gun lobbyists have so much control. Furious

that somehow, someone's right to own a gun is more important

than my children's right to life. Furious that lawmakers are

too scared to take a stand.

She finishes by writing this:

I ask you to think about your choices. Look at the pictures

of the 26 innocent lives taken so needlessly and wastefully,

using a weapon that never should have been in the hands of

civilians. Really think. Changing the laws may

``inconvenience'' some gun owners, but it may also save a

life, perhaps a life that is dear to me or you. Are you

really willing to risk it? There must not be another Sandy

Hook. You have a responsibility and an obligation to act now

and to change the laws.

I hope and pray that you do not fail.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m., and that the time during the recess count postcloture on the Watt nomination with the time equally divided in the usual form.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business.

Mr. President, we are about to hit the 1-year mark since the tragic shooting in Sandy Hook, CT, which took the lives of 20 little boys and girls, 6- and 7-year-olds, and 6 of their educators who cared for them.

It should be a source of great embarrassment to the Senate and the House of Representatives that we have not moved the ball forward 1 inch when it comes to the issue of protecting the thousands of people all across this country who are killed by guns every year. This is the case even while 90 percent of Americans agree that people should have proof that they are not a criminal before they buy a gun and that there is really no reason why we should allow military-style weapons to get into the hands of ordinary Americans. We should be embarrassed by the fact that we are not doing more to try to stem the scourge of gun violence that plagues our Nation today. But we should be even more embarrassed if this week we cannot pass a commonsense extension and update to the Undetectable Firearms Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that has been on the books since 1988. Most people in this country have no idea it exists because up until this week it has been so noncontroversial.

In an effort to explain to my colleagues a little bit about why this is so important, I wish to take my colleagues back 60 years to World War II. In World War II the allies developed a very small firearm called the Liberator. The Liberator was capable of only firing one shot. It was a very small, little gun. The idea was that we would get this out to the resistance movement in Europe and they would be able to conceal this very small firearm so they could get close enough to a German soldier, use the one bullet in the gun to kill the soldier, and then take his weapon. That program never went very far.

Fast forward to 70 years later, to a University of Texas student who came up with a design for a new undetectable firearm--a plastic gun that can be reproduced on what is now known as the 3D printer--named the Liberator. It is very similar to the gun that was developed by the resistance movement during World War II. Witness also the fact that once he posted the plans for that plastic undetectable gun online, those plans were downloaded 100,000 times in short order across this country before the Department of State used its authority to take down those plans.

I don't know exactly what the designs for this gun were, but it can be used in the exact same way the original Liberator gun was used. It is a plastic gun which is undetectable by imaging equipment, by metal detectors. It can be used to get into a very secure place such as, let's say, a government building. The ones being designed today, such as the one the young guy in Texas put online, can't fire more than a couple of bullets, but it can fire enough bullets to injure a law enforcement officer or a security officer, take their gun, and do even more damage.

So we have two problems today when it comes to this new issue of undetectable plastic guns:

First, the law passed in 1988 that bans the manufacture, possession, or sale of undetectable firearms--firearms that can't be picked up with a metal detector, that can essentially move into secure locations without being identified--expires today. If we don't pass an extension, tomorrow it will be legal in this country to create an undetectable firearm.

The second problem is this new technology that is pretty widely available, already called 3D printing, has made it very easy to make firearms that comply with the existing law but are still potentially undetectable.

Why is that? Because to be a legal weapon, you have to have a certain amount of the weapon be metal so it can be picked up by a metal detector or an x ray machine. But because we can now make very creatively constructed weapons with 3-D printers, that piece of metal can be easily removed before it goes through a metal detector and still be used without the metal on the other side of the detection unit, thus essentially erasing the benefit of having a metal component if the metal component can just be stripped out.

It is a pretty simple update we have to make here. All we have to say is that the metal piece of the gun has to be integral to the firing mechanism of the gun so that if you take the metal out to get it through a metal detector it does not work on the other end. But we are having a hard time getting that commonsense update--just recognizing the advancement of technology--passed in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

So we have these two problems: one, the underlying bill--which is still really good law even without the update--is expiring. We have to pass it here. Second, we need this update to be taken care of.

This is not science fiction anymore. The threat of undetectable firearms has always been around and that is why in 1988 both parties got together to pass it. It has been extended since then. But it is no longer science fiction that somebody can make a gun in their basement basically obliterating the utility of all of our Nation's firearms laws and use it to perpetrate great evil throughout this country.

Mr. President, 3-D printers cost only about $2,000 today. Most futurists are pretty certain that in maybe a decade or more most Americans will have access to this technology. Just like the photocopier and the personal computer seemed out of reach at some point for most middle-class Americans, maybe today the 3-D printer is, but in a decade or more it might be another household appliance that sits right next to your computer printer.

Second, we know how dangerous plastic guns are because people have tested this premise. One investigative journalist in Israel took a plastic gun into

the Israeli Parliament--got through the serious security that surrounds that building, got into the Parliament, and sat 10 rows behind Benjamin Netanyahu with a plastic gun in his possession. So this is not science fiction. It is not just a perceived or imagined threat. This is real, this is now, and we have to do something about it.

One of the things that has happened in the wake of Sandy Hook is that schools have invested in enormous amounts of security. I am somebody who does not believe ultimately that is the way you keep schools safe. But to the extent that schools have put in more metal detectors, have put in more security platforms around their entryways and exit ways, it does not do any good if somebody can walk through that school, who wants to do great damage within it, with a plastic firearm that will be legal in this country in one way, shape, or form if we do not pass an updated version of this bill right now this week.

It is time we recognize the future is here, plastic guns are real. As we approach the 1-year anniversary of the most horrific school shooting this country has ever seen, it is time for us to do what we have many times before: reauthorize and update the Undetectable Firearms Act.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for telling the stories of people in California, which are not unlike the stories in Connecticut--an exchange that is working, a flood of people signing up way above expectations from where we originally thought the numbers would be. I thank her as well for pointing out what is the reality--which is that over 40 times Republicans in the House of Representatives and in the Senate have voted to repeal the health care reform law. Even well over the last 5 years, using over and over this mantra of repeal and replace, they have offered absolutely no replacement.

There is a story in one of the trade publications this morning saying that the Republicans were just going to change their strategy. Instead of piling on repeal vote after repeal vote, they are now just going to come down to the

floor and use their committee chairmanships to simply criticize the law, and shelve, for the time being, their incessant efforts to try to repeal the law entirely.

But make no mistake, that continues to be their intention. While they are going to come down to the floor of the Senate, as they did this morning, and tell a handful of anecdotes about people who are dissatisfied with the law, their true intention is to get rid of the entire law and go back to a world in which 30 million people in this country had no access to insurance; that if you got sick, you would lose your insurance; a world in which insurance companies essentially set the rules of the game, to the disadvantage of providers and patients. That is what the agenda is here, to repeal the law and go back to the status quo, which is unacceptable--the highest number of uninsured citizens in the industrialized world, the most expensive health care system by a factor of two, compared to all of our G-20 competitors.

I get it that there are people who are unhappy, and the President is going to make an announcement later today which is going to set a path forward to try to fix one of the issues with the law with respect to cancelled policies. But I will share a couple of other stories about what the reality of the old system was.

Kyle is today about 11 years old, but when we first came into my office he was an 8-year-old living with hemophilia. Kyle is an amazingly brave young man who inspires courage in his parents. But Kyle has to get three to four injections a week in order to treat his hemophilia, and each one of those injections costs $3,000.

His plan prior to health care reform had a feature in it that most people didn't know was included in their health care plan. That was a lifetime cap on the amount of money his health insurance company would pay for his care. Because Kyle was mounting up bills in the tens of thousands of dollars every week, his family was going to hit that cap very quickly and then be on the hook for those $3,000 injections that Kyle needs to take three to four times a week. That was going to bankrupt Kyle's family. They thank their lucky stars that we passed this health care reform law, because now their insurance has to be real insurance. It protects them against their lifetime exposure of high health care costs.

Think about the Burgers from Meriden, CT. Betty and her husband had insurance their entire life, except for a 1-week period of time when Betty's husband switched jobs. During that 1-week period of time, their son was diagnosed with cancer, and because that was then a preexisting condition, her husband's new insurance plan wouldn't cover their son's treatment. Their story, unfortunately, can be told millions of times over across this country--because the Burgers went bankrupt. They lost their savings, they lost their house, and they lost everything as they mounted up huge bills to pay for their son's cancer treatments, just because he got diagnosed during a 1-week period of time in which their family had no health care insurance. That practice ends with the implementation of this health care law. No sick person can be denied insurance simply because of a preexisting condition, simply because a diagnosis happened to happen during a small window of time in which their family didn't have insurance.

I get it that the road has been a little bumpy as we have implemented this new health care system. But it is nothing compared to the bumps which have been encountered by millions of families across this country who have been abused by a system which simply does not work.

If our biggest problem is that enough people who don't have insurance aren't signing up quick enough for insurance, that is a problem I will accept because it is a problem we can fix. If all we are talking about here is just the pace at which people are going from uninsured to insured, then we can fix that. We can fix that because we know the product is good.

Senator Boxer talked about the Massachusetts experience, where during the first month of their enrollment for the Massachusetts exchange only 0.3 percent of the total signed up during that month. Why? Because people take their time. This is not an easy decision, to sign up for health care. But in Connecticut, where we have an exchange which has been up and running and a Web site that is working, in the first month our number wasn't 0.3 percent. We enrolled nearly 10 percent of our expected total in the first 30 days.

Here is what people say about their experience with Connecticut's exchange. One person said: This is a great resource for Connecticut residents to apply for health coverage thanks to the health care law.

Another said: I chose Access Health because I have been denied in the past by other carriers before this law changed.

Another said: Thank you so much for this health care law. I haven't been insured in a decade. I am so, so thankful.

Another said: Thank you for this program. I lost my job a year ago and couldn't find anything that I can afford in health coverage before this law passed.

Finally, another said: Thank you. This law is helpful and appreciated. God bless America, and thank you President Obama.

The President is going to make an announcement which will paint a path forward for the relatively small number of Americans--4 percent-- who get their insurance in the individual market, some of which have had their plans canceled. But the solution with respect to the timing of enrollment is not to abandon the law, as is the real agenda of people on this floor. The solution is to fix the problem so that, like in Connecticut, more people across this country can for the first time have access to affordable quality health care.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, reports are emerging of another school shooting today. Early reports out of Pittsburgh are that three people have been shot at a high school. The police right now are searching for the shooter in the woods surrounding the high school. We hope and we pray that the three reported victims will survive.

This is becoming part of our regular work week in Washington; that we can expect at some point during the week that we are going to turn on the TV to one of the cable news networks and find a live report from a school or a mall or a church somewhere in this country where a shooting is in progress. It is happening at a rate I don't think any of us could have expected. This number is growing at a rate I don't think any of us could have expected.

I brought this chart to the floor of the Senate for about 6 months since the failure of our commonsense anti-gun violence bill this spring. This number represents the number of Americans who have died of gun violence since December 14.

December 14 means something to everybody in this Chamber but certainly to those of us from Connecticut. That is the day in which 26 6- and 7-year-olds and the teachers who protected them died in Sandy Hook--10,465 additional people have died.

I have tried to come down to the Senate floor since the failure of that bill to try to tell the stories of these victims. If statistics don't do the job, if the sheer numbers alone don't convince people that something should change, then maybe hearing about who these people are might change things. We hope we will not add to this number with some new young victims from the reported shooting in Pittsburgh today.

These shootings happen in unlikely places. Schools, now, unfortunately, are a likely place for a shooting to happen because they seem to happen with some regularity in schools, in part because we do very little, if anything, to stop them with legislation from this Chamber.

They are happening in other unlikely places as well. Clubs--for instance, in New Haven, CT--have been the site four times just this year of major shootings. Only a few weeks ago, on October 26, police in New Haven responded to an early Saturday morning shooting at a place called the Key Club Cabaret. They arrived and found that 26-year-old Erika Robinson had been killed in a shooting spree that also injured 19-year-old Amanda John, 29-year-old Jahad Brumsey, 24-year-old Nijia Ward, 34-year-old Albert Dickerson, as well as 25-year-old Ivette Sterling.

Officers rushed to the scene as hundreds of patrons were running out.

They walked in and found six victims of gun violence--a dispute in a club resulting in the death of Erika Robinson and several more being injured.

Only a few days ago, in Cypress, TX, there was another shooting at a house party in which two high school students were killed and 19 others were injured shortly before 11 p.m. on November 9, 2013. There was a house party celebrating a young woman's 18th birthday. And because of a local dispute between two rival groups, Qu'eric Danarius Bernard Richardson, 17 years old, was killed, and Arielle Shepherd as well. According to authorities, Richardson was shot in the head while he was running away from the house party. When students returned to school on Monday, there was a lot of crying as they mourned the death of two of their classmates.

School parties celebrating 18th birthdays, clubs in places like New Haven and Bridgeport, CT--not places you think of going where you might end up being shot at when you walk into them--are now the scenes of pretty vicious shootings, as are our schools.

And shootings are increasingly happening in another way as well--by accident. Unfortunately, in preparation for a lot of these speeches, I riffle through a lot of pretty grizzly reports and increasingly I am seeing more and more accidental shootings ending up in tragedy. In Waterbury, CT, again, just a few weeks ago, Dow Kling and Shawn French, both 22 years old, were playing around with their .22 caliber Ruger inside an apartment in Waterbury when the gun went off and Dow was shot to death. His best friend Shawn French, who shot him, said:

I'm sorry. I wish it was me and not him. I wish I could

trade places with him, I really do.

A week earlier, in Henderson, NV, another example where Cherish Pincombe was playing around with a gun with her friend Colin Lowrey. The Remington .45 was loaded. They didn't know it was loaded, and Colin shot Cherish dead, 23 years old. She was described as follows:

An amazing coworker. She was so caring. She was kind. She

was always helpful. She always wanted to do something to help

you out. She was very generous.

And just because they didn't understand the gun was loaded, and they were being reckless and playing around with a firearm, Cherish is dead.

So that is why people out there don't understand why we can't have an honest conversation about change. Even when those conversations are attempting to take place, they get shut down and cut off. A pretty innocent op-ed piece in the Guns & Ammo magazine suggested that maybe people should get a few hours of training before they get a concealed carry permit. As a consequence of running that editorial, the editor of Guns & Ammo had to resign and step down, simply because he ran an op-ed by an author that suggested maybe people should get some training before they have a concealed weapon.

So even when we try to engage in these discussions, we can't have them because the folks who get their money from the gun industry, whether it be the NRA or these magazines, aren't even allowed to have these conversations, despite the fact that 84 percent of gun owners support universal background checks, despite the fact that 50 percent of gun owners support a restriction on high-capacity ammunition clips, despite the fact that 46 percent of gun owners think it is a good idea to ban high-powered assault weapons.

Organizations such as Guns & Ammo and the NRA are out of step with gun owners who don't want to see this number continue increasing, who don't want to turn on the TV and see another school shooting.

The reason I come here to talk about who these victims are is because the conscience of this Nation should be enough to move this place to action, and it is about time gun owners and nongun owners alike get together to do something about this. There is much more agreement than there is disagreement among both people who own guns and people who choose not to own guns. Whether it is background checks or a ban on illegal gun trafficking or just a simple requirement that you get a little bit of training on how to use a gun so you don't fire it accidentally and end up shooting your best friend, there are simple commonsense bipartisan things we can do to make sure this number doesn't continue to accelerate at the pace that it has since December 14.

I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we have been trying to figure out all day how to fit five numbers on this poster. I have been bringing it down nearly every week since the anti-gun violence bill failed here in the Senate due to a Republican filibuster, and this is the first week this poster comes down to the floor of the Senate with five digits. There have been 10,287 Americans killed by guns since December 14, the day of the Sandy Hook shooting.

What I have been endeavoring to do since the failure of that bill on the floor of the Senate--despite the fact that 80 to 90 percent of Americans supported the bill--is to bring to the floor the voices of victims, because the statistics are numbing at this point. We have had 10,000 people in this country die at the hands of gun violence since December 14, and that apparently has not been enough to move this place, or the House of Representatives, to action.

My hope is that by coming down to this floor every week or so and telling the real stories--the human stories--about the individuals who have lost their lives and the absolutely catastrophic runoff of trauma that happens to a family and a neighborhood and a community when you lose a loved one due to gun violence, maybe that will move this place to do something.

I want to tell three stories this afternoon because it now is kind of routine--you just sort of wonder what day

of the week is it going to be when you turn on CNN or look at your Twitter feed and you see ``active shooting in progress,'' ``school lockdown,'' or ``people fleeing airport.'' It just kind of happens every week now. It has become a kind of commonplace occurrence. It is almost like raindrops in the background of news coverage on a daily basis--this week's shooting, next week's shooting.

On October 21, a seventh grader named Jose Reyes, a student at Sparks Middle School, opened fire with a handgun he took from his parents. He killed a teacher, himself, and left two other students wounded at a middle school in Nevada.

The teacher he killed was named Mike Landsberry, and, boy, you don't get much more American than Mike Landsberry. He was an Alabama native. He graduated from high school in Reno, which is right next door to Sparks, in 1986, and then served in the Marine Corps. He joined the Air National Guard after he got out of the Marine Corps. He rose to the rank of master sergeant and served as a cargo specialist in Kuwait and Afghanistan. He fought for this country. He put his life on the line to defend this Nation. When he came back, as happens with thousands of veterans, he decided to continue his public service and became an incredibly popular math teacher.

His brother said of Mike: He is ``the kind of person that if someone needed help he would be there. He loved teaching. He loved the kids. He loved coaching them . . . He was just a good all-around individual.''

Mike is no longer with us because he is now one of the over 10,000 Americans who have died at the hands of a gun--this time in a school shooting on October 21.

Gerardo Hernandez, according to his wife, was always excited to go to work. He was a joyful person who took pride in his duty for the American public. Gerardo was the TSA screener at the Los Angeles International Airport who was gunned down when Paul Ciancia, a troubled 23-year-old, walked into LAX with an assault weapon and a grievance and grudge against the government. He opened fire and killed Gerardo Hernandez, age 39. He was the youngest in a family of four boys who had all emigrated from El Salvador. He was 15 years old when they made the decision to come to the United States to seek a better, safer, more stable life. And now the youngest of four boys is one of 10,287.

Finally, the story of Maria Flores, who, frankly, didn't make headlines when she died over the summer along with her daughter Elizabeth Gomez. They died in Las Vegas when Manuel Mata, her boyfriend with a history of jealousy and domestic violence, shot and killed Maria. He shot and killed her teenaged daughter and wounded a 4-year- old before turning the gun on himself.

Family members said that Mata had financial troubles, drank often, displayed jealousy, and constantly accused his girlfriend of cheating. They said his girlfriend Maria Flores, who died that day, threatened to move out of the residence a couple of weeks earlier, but she was convinced by Mata to stay.

The daughter who was killed was scheduled to graduate 3 days after the murder took place.

I tell these three stories for this reason: First, in the wake of the TSA shooting, a lot of folks from the gun lobby made the argument that the way to fix this problem was to arm TSA agents, just as people made the argument that the way to guarantee another Sandy Hook tragedy from happening is to arm the teachers. Some people actually had the audacity to argue that an even better way was to arm the students too.

It speaks to this sort of new philosophy that has infested this place--the Senate and the House--that I kind of describe as gun control Darwinism, the idea that if everybody has a gun--the good guys and the bad guys--hopefully enough of the good guys will shoot the bad guys. You just throw a whole mess load of guns out there, let them figure it out, and in the end we will take care of the bad guys.

We have some new data that tells us how backwards that philosophy is. Common sense tells you that is not a good idea, but the data now tells you that is not a good idea.

The American Journal of Public Health did the most comprehensive study ever done in this country. They looked at rates of gun ownership and rates of homicide by gun death. They looked at decades of data across every State in the Nation, and then they had the common sense to account for about every factor you could think of: gender, race, poverty, income, education, alcohol use, and crime rates. What they found is pretty stunning and straightforward. The American Journal of Public Health said that for every 1 percent increase in gun ownership in a particular State, locality, or geographic region, there is a firearms homicide rate increase of 1 percent, a 1-to-1 ratio. If gun ownership goes up by 1 percent, increases in gun homicide go up by 1 percent.

Police chiefs in city after city across the country will verify that. As they have taken guns off the street, as they have engaged in gun buyback programs, guess what. Miraculously gun deaths decrease. That is not to say the only thing that matters is the number of guns on the street. Clearly, this young man who walked into Sparks Middle School and the 23-year-old who walked into LAX had enormous issues that were going untreated. We are fooling ourselves if any of us are trying to perpetuate an argument that this is just about gun ownership. This is also about a very broken mental health system that we need to address. But a 1-percent increase in gun ownership leads to a 1-percent increase in gun violence.

The reason I tell Maria's story is because this is Domestic Violence Awareness Month--or maybe it was October. We have either completed it or we are in that month. Here is a stunning fact: In States that have comprehensive background checks, women are 38 percent less likely to die from domestic violence crimes. Women are 38 percent less likely to die from domestic violence crimes if they are lucky enough to live in a State that says: Before you buy a gun, you have to prove to us you are not a domestic abuser.

Since 1998, 250,000 domestic abusers have been stopped from buying guns because of background check laws. That is just the domestic abusers who were dumb enough to show up at a gun store and try to buy a firearm. That doesn't count, frankly, the millions of domestic abusers who never walked into the store to buy the gun in the first place because they knew they were going to be denied. Women in the United States are 11 times more likely to be murdered by a gun than women in any other high-income Nation. And we have a solution: background checks. Women are 40 percent less likely to die from domestic violence if they live in a State that does background checks.

I bring just three stories to the floor today in my effort to bring voices to the victims--the stories of Mike, a teacher in Nevada; Gerardo, an immigrant to this country who loved doing his public service as a TSA screener; and Maria Flores, one of thousands of women across this country killed by their spouses or partners in part because of the ease of access to a gun in this country.

So 10,287 people--that number is tough to fit on one board. That is just in 11 months. Frankly, it won't be that long--just a handful of years from now--before there is absolutely no way to fit this number on this board unless the Senate and the House of Representatives decide that 90 percent of Americans are right and we should make sure criminals can't access guns. We should ban illegal gun trafficking. We should expand the reach of our mental health system so we can finally say that Congress--the Senate and the House--is going to do something to give voice to these victims.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.