Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Madam President, let me first associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Maryland. We are engaging in a bit of theater of the absurd on the floor of the Senate, as we have been chided for years now that the Senate would not and could not adopt a budget.

Having finally done that, Republicans are refusing to allow us to move forward with the process that would finally get us out of this crisis-by-crisis mentality and do what the American people have wanted us to do for a long time, which is to sit across the table with Republicans, two parties in one room, with the TV cameras on, trying to find some settlements, somewhere where 70 percent of the American public can find agreement with us.

Gun Control

I am here, though, to turn back the clock about 3 weeks to another day that I would argue is amongst the saddest this Chamber has seen in a long time. That was the day in which we went against the wishes of 90 percent of the American public and refused to adopt a measure that would have applied background checks to the vast majority of gun purchases in this country, that they also would have for the first time made gun trafficking, illegal gun trafficking, a Federal crime.

During those days I came down to this floor four or five times to tell the stories of victims, the victims of Sandy Hook, but also the victims of, frankly, countless other mass shootings and routine gun violence mainly in our urban corridors. I said no matter what happens on that vote that I wouldn't stop, that I would come down here and continue to tell the real stories that should matter.

We didn't get that bill passed, even though we had the support of 55 Members of the Senate. Our fight isn't over because the plight of gun victims and the surviving of relatives of gun victims are not over either.

This is an old chart. It is one I had up here for a number of hours during that week. It displays the number of people who have been killed by guns since December 14, 2012, when my State was witness to one of the worst mass shooting tragedies this country has ever seen.

We would have to now have two charts up here to simply display the same thing, because this number, which was somewhere in the 3,000s, has now easily cleared 4,000, maybe even up close to 5,000--the number of people who since Sandy Hook have been killed across this country by gun violence.

I wanted to come back down here to the Senate floor this week, as I will next week and the week after, to continue to tell the stories of who these people are, because they deserve an answer. The status quo is not acceptable to the mounting legions of families who have lost loved ones due to gun violence that could have been prevented if we had the courage to stand up and do something in this Chamber, if we had the courage to take on the gun lobby and make some commonsense changes the majority of Americans, the vast majority of Americans, support.

Let me tell you a few of these stories today, because I know we have other issues on the floor today to talk about. Let me tell you about Shamari Jenkins. She was 21 years old, and she lived in Hartford. About a week ago, on April 29, she was gunned down while driving in a car through the city of Hartford with her boyfriend. She was driving through the city when someone shot a couple of bullets through the back of the vehicle. It hit her and killed her. It went through her torso and her shoulder. She was 4 months pregnant when she was shot and killed. She was just a couple days away from that magical day many parents have experienced when they find out whether they are having a boy or a girl. That appointment was just a couple days away when she was killed. Close friends and family describe her as sweet and upbeat, with a lot of energy. Shamari was killed in Hartford at age 21 on April 29. Every single day in this country, on average, 30 people are killed by guns, many of them stories just like this.

The ages of all of the people I have been talking about on this floor--you get a couple who are in their forties or their fifties, a few, as I will talk about later, even younger--the majority of these kids are 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 years old. It is a cruel moment to take somebody from this world, because when you are 21 you have a vision as to who this person is going to be. You can sort of see the greatness. Her friends described her as someone who always had a smile on her face. Yet you steal so much of their life. Shamari Jenkins, 21 years old, killed a week ago.

There are younger victims such as Caroline Starks, who, 1 day after Shamari Jenkins was killed, was killed in Cumberland County, KY, by her 5-year-old brother. She was 2 years old, and she was killed in an accidental shooting by her 5-year-old brother. She was killed by a .22 caliber Crickett rifle. They were messing around in the little bit of time that their mother had stepped outside onto the porch. Her brother picked up this little Crickett rifle, one he used to go hunting with his family. He was 5 years old, and he shot his 2-year-old sister. She died. It was a Crickett rifle. It is a cute name, right? It is a cute name because it is marketed to kids and sold as ``My First Rifle.'' It is made by a company that also makes another line of guns called Chipmunk rifles.

I certainly understand that in a lot of families there is a long history of hunting together as a family. The reality is that some of these shootings are malicious, with the number of guns that are out there. A gun lobby organization that used to spend a lot of time on gun safety now spends most of its time simply arguing for laws that perpetuate the number of guns in society. These accidental shootings are happening more and more.

Another one happened 3 days before Caroline Starks was killed. Michele Wanko of Parkside, PA, lost her husband William this year when she accidentally shot and killed him in the basement of their home. He was giving her lessons on how to use a semiautomatic pistol. As he demonstrated to her how to use one, she picked up another gun and accidentally fired it into his upper chest. Her screams awoke their 5- year-old son, who was sleeping alongside their 2-year-old son upstairs. It is not just mass shootings, it is not just urban violence, it is also this rash of accidental shootings taking the lives of mothers and children that we have seen as well.

We still should talk about these mass shootings because our inaction almost guarantees it is going to happen again. A lot of people said the law that we had on the floor of the Senate a couple of weeks ago had nothing to do with Newtown, so why are we talking about a piece of legislation that ultimately wouldn't have prevented an Adam Lanza from walking into that school and shooting 26 people.

That is true, but we know from experience that a better background check system could have prevented at least one mass tragedy in this country, and that is the Columbine tragedy. The guns that were used to perpetuate that crime on April 20, 1999, were bought at a gun show, the Tanner Gun Show, by a friend of the assailants. She bought the guns at a gun show because she knew if she bought them at a federally licensed dealer, she wouldn't have been able to do so. She would not have been able to walk out of that store with a gun. She went into a gun show where she wouldn't have to go through a background check.

Perhaps if we had a stronger background check system on the books on April 20, 1999, Rachel Joy Scott would still be with us today. Rachel was an aspiring actress. Her father said she was just made for the camera. She wasn't just acting, she was writing plays. She had written one already, and she was getting ready to write another one. She was a devout Christian and she kept diaries where she wrote about her hope for living a life that would change the world with small acts of compassion.

Maybe if we had had a better background check system in 1999, Daniel Lee Rohrbaough would still be alive today. He worked in his family's car and home stereo business. He loved electronics, and he had real talent for it. He would make a little bit of money working at the store, but he would never spend it on himself. He spent almost all of the money he earned on Christmas presents. His father remembers Danny's generosity by saying he didn't spend any of the money on himself, and he was upset because he came up $4 short on the last present for Christmas.

Maybe we would still have Daniel Conner Mauser with us today. He was a straight-A student. He was the top biology student in his sophomore class. He was shy, but he knew he was shy and he wanted to overcome it, so he joined the debate team to become more confident about public speaking. He was as compassionate as Daniel was. When a neighbor became ill, he went down there, raked leaves, and asked how he could help his neighbor. He loved swimming, skiing, and hiking. He was on the school's cross-country team, a straight-A student, and the top biology student in his class. We will never get to know what Daniel Conner Mauser would have been.

If we had a better background check system, maybe Matthew Joseph Kechter would still be alive today. He was another straight-A student but a student athlete as well. He was a starting lineman on Columbine's football team. He was a great student athlete but also a great older brother. His younger brother looked up to Matthew and would wait at the mailbox for Matthew to come home from school every day. Matt hoped to attend the University of Colorado where he wanted to study engineering--a straight-A student, a student athlete who wanted to be an engineer. Doesn't that sound like the type of kid we need in this country today?

These are another half dozen of the thousands of victims we have read about in the newspapers and watched news about on TV since December 14, 2012.

One of the arguments I have heard repeated over and over, both during the debate on the floor and since then, is that even if we passed these laws, it wouldn't matter. Sure, you say the guns were purchased outside of the background check system for the Columbine shootings. Even if the background checks were required, these kids would have found another way to get the guns.

Another way of putting the argument is criminals are going to violate the law, so why pass the law in the first place? That is as absurd an argument as you can muster in this place. Frankly, that is an argument not to have any laws at all. People drive drunk and they kill people. Republicans aren't coming down to the floor of the Senate and saying we should get rid of drunk driving laws because there are people who still go out and drink and drive. There are, unfortunately, other men out there who beat their wives, but nobody is coming down to the floor of the Senate or the House and arguing we should get rid of our domestic violence laws because some people don't follow them.

The fact is we make a decision as a country what standards we are going to apply to conduct. We trust that is going to funnel some conduct away from the kinds we don't want into the kinds we want. It is also going to allow us to punish those who act outside of the boundaries we have set. That is why we still have drunk driving laws and domestic violence laws, even if some people ignore them. It is why we should have an expectation that criminals in this country shouldn't have guns, even if some criminals are still going to ignore the law and get the guns anyway. That way we can punish those people who do wrong, and we can have some comfort in knowing that some people will choose to do right because of the consequence of the law being in place.

There was no consequence for that young lady, the friend of the Columbine shooters, when she went outside the background check system to get guns for her friends. We will never know if she would have made a different decision, but why not have the law to test out the theory. For the thousands of people who have died since December 14, they would take that chance that the law will work.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, they say when a person outlives their child, it is unnatural; it violates the laws of nature, and a person is never ever the same. We all wish we never have to experience that phenomenon.

But on Friday, December 14, 20 sets of moms and dads sent their first graders off to school at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT, expecting, as every parent does, to see them come home on Friday and then go out and spend a wonderful weekend with their kids. It was going to be a great weekend because it was the Christmas season. As a parent of a little boy who is a little bit younger than the first graders who went into that classroom that day, I know how amazing the Christmas season can be with a little one. Whether they were going to be picking out their Christmas tree or putting up outdoor lights or visiting Santa Claus, it was going to be the kind of weekend parents live for.

Those parents sent their kids off to school that morning and a few hours later, one shockwave of violence later, 40 parents had outlived their children.

I have been so angry for months. I have been angry at Adam Lanza. I have been angry at his mother for giving him access to those guns. I have been angry at this place for 20 years of inaction. But, mostly, I have been angry at the people in this Chamber and outside of this Chamber who say what we are discussing here right now this week wouldn't have changed what happened in Newtown. I am angry for this first simple reason: They are wrong. Guns have become so much more powerful in this Nation over the past several decades--so powerful that the assault weapon, the military-style assault weapon that was brought into that school that day, was fired at 20 children and every single one of the kids who was hit died. None of them survived because of the power of that weapon. It got off over 150 bullets in a time period that was perhaps only 5 minutes long, from a weapon that could discharge 6 bullets a second. If there had been a weapon of lesser power in that school that day, there might be kids still alive.

Second, the shooter, to get 150 rounds off, only had to switch magazines 6 times. During at least one of those exchanges, a bunch of kids ran out of the room, and they are alive today. If we had a limitation on magazines that was closer to 10 rounds, Adam Lanza would have had to have changed clips 15 times, providing another 9 opportunities for some subset of those 20 kids to run out and rejoin their parents for the weekend.

In addition to passing laws that would have changed the reality in Sandy Hook, we have an obligation to make sure it doesn't happen again, and we have an obligation to do something about the routine, everyday gun violence plaguing this Nation. Twenty-eight people died in Newtown that day, including 26 at the school, the shooter, and his mother. But every single day the average is higher. Thirty people on average are dying across this country from gun violence. From a statistical point of view, December 14 was just an average day.

So what do we do? The amendments we are debating here today offered by my Democratic colleagues are a good step in the right direction. I suggest there are three rules that should guide our actions. Frankly, I think these are pretty simple rules that the vast majority of the American public in every single State we represent here would agree with.

First, I believe people should be able to own guns, to protect themselves, to shoot for sport, to hunt, but the criminals shouldn't be able to own guns. If someone opposes the Manchin-Toomey amendment, they cannot say with a straight face they oppose criminals getting guns. If a Member votes against Manchin-Toomey, they are basically saying they are OK with more criminals having guns.

Ninety percent of Americans want us to make this commonsense change. Ninety percent of Americans want us to crack down on the number of criminals who have weapons out there, because they know almost 40 percent of gun sales in this country are done without a background check.

For a while, I could only explain opposition to near universal background checks through the power of the gun

lobby, because I thought people must know in their heart that a simple, easy thing to do is to make sure criminals don't own guns, so there must be some external pressure that is forcing people to do the wrong thing. The longer I have spent in this place, the more I am convinced there are people who actually believe we should go back to the days of the wild, wild west; that we should usher in a new era of gun control Darwinism, in which the good guys have guns and the bad guys have guns and we hope the good guys shoot the bad guys. The gun lobby frankly tells us this. We should probably listen to them. They say the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to give a good guy a gun, that the government should get out of the way.

The second rule is this: Some guns are too dangerous to have on the streets. We have always accepted this premise. We have always said there are certain weapons that should be in the hands of law enforcement and the military only. Guns have changed over the years. Guns that used to be in the hands of the military now are available to the public and Adam Lanza had one of those weapons when he walked into that school. These are military weapons. These aren't weapons one needs to defend one's home. These are not weapons we need to go out and shoot at targets or hunt in our forests. These are weapons designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible, and they are finding their way into our schools and our movie theaters and our places of worship. Some guns are too dangerous to have on the street.

Third, some ammunition too easily allows for mass murder. The young man who walked into the movie theater in Aurora had a weapon and attached to it was a 100-round drum. Who on Earth needs a 100-round drum of ammunition to protect themselves, to go out and shoot for sport? Nobody does. It should be illegal. Thirty rounds is too much as well. Thirty-round clips, one-hundred-round drums, too easily lead to mass murder and it is being seen in this country over and over and over.

We can take a step forward to realizing those three basic principles today on the floor of the Senate. We can vote for the Manchin-Toomey amendment supported by 90 percent of the American public which will make sure less criminals have guns, something that everybody out there--except for a subset of people in this Chamber--agrees on. We can make the decision to take these dangerous assault weapons off the streets, allowing for thousands of weapons to still be legally purchasable, but to say the most dangerous ones should stay in the hands of the military and law enforcement, and we can say enough is enough when it comes to these high-capacity clips.

We know the shooting stopped in Aurora and Tucson when they exchanged magazines. We know kids escaped in Newtown when the shooter exchanged clips. Less bullets per magazine means more people survive these mass shootings. We can do that today as well.

When we vote today, I would suggest that of all of the victims we can think about--and I have been coming down to the floor for the last 2 weeks talking about victims; I probably told the story of 50 or 60 or 70 victims on the floor of this Senate--that we think of two specifically. I would end today by talking first about a woman from Chicago named Shirley Chambers. Shirley raised her four kids, three boys and one girl, in the infamous Cabrini-Green housing complex in Chicago. That is where ``Good Times'' supposedly took place. It was a tough life, but she remembers her kids riding tricycles throughout the neighborhood and she said they were all happy kids.

On January 26 of this year, seven people were killed from gun violence--seven people in 1 day were killed from gun violence in Chicago. One of them was her son Ronnie Chambers. His mother buried him soon after his death. Ronnie was one of the 3,300 people who had been killed by gun violence in our cities and in our suburbs since December 14 of last year. She had four kids, but after Ronnie died Shirley was childless, because all four of her children had been killed by guns on the streets of Chicago: Carlos, Jerome, LaToya, and now Ronnie, all gone. She said, ``My life will never ever be the same again.'' Isn't that the understatement of the decade.

Lastly, I want my colleagues to think of Mark and Jackie Barden. I have talked a lot about little Daniel on the floor of the Senate, so I will end my remarks in this debate with him. Mark and Jackie lost Daniel that morning. These parents from Newtown have been so generous. They have visited our offices. They have allowed myself and Senator Blumenthal to come to this floor and to tell the story of who their kids were and who their kids would have been. Mark and Jackie said this of Daniel after he died:

Everyone who has ever met Daniel remembers and loves him.

Words cannot express what a special boy Daniel was. Such a

light. Always smiling, unfailingly polite, incredibly

affectionate, fair, and so thoughtful towards others,

imaginative in play, both intelligent and articulate in

conversation; in all, a constant source of laughter and joy.

Daniel was fearless in his pursuit of happiness and life. He

earned his ripped jeans and his missing two front teeth.

Despite that, his mother said, he was just so good. He

embodied everything that is wholesome and innocent in the

world.

Every morning, the Bardens' kids would leave for school in succession. They all went to different schools. Daniel was the youngest, so he left the latest. Like most kids, he never got out of bed until he absolutely had to. So every morning, his older brother, whom he adored, left for school before Daniel had gotten up. But not on December 14. Every single morning that school year, Daniel had slept in as his brother went off to school. But on Friday morning, something different happened. Daniel got up early, and as his brother was walking down the driveway to the bus, for the first time that entire school year, Daniel ran after him in his pajamas and flip-flops, and he hugged his older brother, and he said goodbye.

Losing a child is unnatural, but what should be just as unnatural is a Senator's unwillingness to do something to change that reality. Occasionally, in truly exceptional moments, we hold the power here that is so big and so bold to change the reality of life and death. We cannot amend what happened to the Bardens. Their loss will sear forever. We cannot change the fact that Shirley Chambers lost her four children. She will bear that loss for the rest of her life. But we can reduce the likelihood that more kids will die of gun violence in Chicago. We can reduce the chances that another Sandy Hook will happen. These parents cannot understand the casual willingness of this body to turn our backs on a chance to make sure that kind of loss does not happen to more parents. To them, that would be truly unnatural.

I yield back.

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

Madam President, my colleagues, the week is finally here when we come to the floor to have votes on a piece of legislation we have been waiting on for decades. This Chamber is finally talking about what we can do to stop the plague of gun violence which has rippled through every single corner of this country.

As I watched these mass shootings play out over the course of the last 10 years--whether it be in Colorado or Arizona or Virginia--we think to ourselves that this is just something we are watching. This is just something that has happened somewhere else to someone else. We never think it could happen to us.

I will never forget that day I was in Bridgeport, CT, and it was right before Christmas. We were getting ready to take a train so I could bring my two little boys, along with my wife, to look at the pageantry of New York City. That was the day I got the call that there had been a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I thought it must have been a mistake. I thought, well, to the extent there is something going on at Sandy Hook Elementary School--this quiet hamlet in western Connecticut--it must be some disgruntled employee who walked in and had a grudge.

What I learned over the next few minutes during the half-hour drive to Newtown made my blood freeze. I learned this was a mass shooting involving dozens of adults and kids. I realized it was now happening in my neighborhood, in my State, in my town.

Unfortunately--as I stood at the firehouse where the community gathered that day and all the parents stood waiting for their children to come back or not come back from that school--I realized I had way too many colleagues I could call upon for advice on how, as an elected official, to deal with a tragedy of this magnitude. I could call my friends in Arizona, I could call my friends in Colorado, or I could call my new colleague, Governor Kaine, from Virginia. There were too many places to turn, and it happened to us in Connecticut in a place we never, ever thought would be subjected to gun violence. We are finally at the tipping point on a debate of what we can do. Through all of the back and forth this week and last week about whether we would have a vote on this floor or would we have to overcome a filibuster, could we come to a compromise on background checks, would we add provisions to ban high-capacity magazines, underneath it all are these victims. There have been thousands of victims. There were the little girls and boys in Newtown, but also 16-, 17-, 31-, and 68-year-olds from across the country who have been gunned down over the course of the last several decades without this body raising a finger to try to make things different. Well, it is time for those victims' stories to be told.

As I did last week, I will be on the floor this week so I can share the stories of victims of gun violence. I will tell stories of lives which were cut way too short because of guns, and, in part, because this body has not been serious enough to stand up and do something about it.

I want to start this afternoon's remarks by returning to the place where it all started for me, and that is Sandy Hook Elementary School. There are 26 stories to tell of the people who lost their lives at that school that day, and I think I have gotten to about 20 or 21 of them. I will talk about the last few stories. It is unbelievable.

I have not had a chance to tell the story of Anne Marie Murphy, even though I told the story of what she did that day on the floor at least once. I just shared her story with my Democratic colleagues.

Before that fatal day, Anne Marie Murphy was an amazing person. Anne Marie was a special education teacher, and she loved her work. She sought out working in the area of special education because she knew she had a talent, as so many of her students and the parents who worked with her found out. They knew she had a talent for reaching out and touching little boys' and little girls' lives.

In fact, it is not a coincidence that a number of the kids who were killed in Sandy Hook Elementary School that day were kids with autism because Sandy Hook was known as a school that had a talent for reaching out to kids on the autistic spectrum. And Anne Marie was part of that story. She was a special education teacher. She was a mother of four wonderful children: Kelly, Colleen, Paige, and Thomas. She grew up in Katonah, NY. She graduated from St. Mary's School there before attending JFK High School in Somers, NY. Then she got her degree in Connecticut at a school that actually was in the process of educating one of the other teachers who was killed that day, Victoria Soto. Southern Connecticut State University is where she got her degree.

She was remembered by her friends and family as sweet, happy, outgoing, and caring, and all of those characteristics came into play that day. I shared this story with my colleagues last week and then behind closed doors today, but I will share it quickly again.

That day, Anne Marie Murphy had in her charge a little boy named Dylan Hockley. When the bullets started flying, Anne Marie took Dylan into her arms and did her best to comfort him and perhaps shield him. When the police came into that classroom, that is how they found Dylan and Anne Marie--in each other's arms. To the Hockleys, the fact that there was some small measure of love being expressed to Dylan in the last horrible moments gives them some small measure of peace. She died a hero doing what she did best.

Anne Marie had been doing this for awhile, but she had a lot of years to give. She was only 52 years old. She could have continued to change the lives of children in need, children with autism, for another 10- plus years. Just think of all the lives she could have affected. How many more Dylan Hockleys could she have found and nurtured and helped work through their autism? We will never get to know. She was killed that day.

Grace McDonnell's parents are amazing. They have been down here to Washington a number of times already. They have led a lot of the debate in our communities in Connecticut about what we do to change the issue of guns and gun violence. They do so because they lost their daughter Grace McDonnell that day.

Grace was 7 years old when she died. Grace had asked for a purple cake with a turquoise peace sign and polka dots when she turned 7. That is what she wanted, I guess, for her birthday, was that purple cake. She loved the color purple and she loved the color pink, as so many of these girls did, and her funeral, which I had the honor of attending, was just buried in pink.

Grace loved the beach. One could always find Grace McDonnell on the beach. She loved country music. Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney were amongst her favorites. She played soccer. She participated in gymnastics. She had a dog, Puddin', that she absolutely adored.

She was a very kind, wonderful little girl, so her parents have tried to think of the ways, big and small, in which they can try to pass along the kindness their 7-year-old little girl Grace showed for the world. They have done that by trying to explain to this country who she is. They have done that by taking all the art she produced--Grace was a fantastic artist, and many of us

have pieces of original art that Grace McDonnell did hanging on our walls in our offices or at our homes. But the McDonnells do small things. Following her memorial service, they stopped at a local restaurant and they ordered a cupcake for every patron who came into the establishment that day--white cake, chocolate frosting, pink and white sprinkles--just to do a small little thing to spread Grace's love throughout this devastated community.

Coincidentally, it was after Grace's funeral that I received word that the NRA was going to oppose virtually everything we did. Up until that moment, I had hoped the NRA was going to be a partner with us. I remember walking out of Grace McDonnell's funeral--amongst the dozens of wakes and funerals I went to over those 2 weeks--and getting a copy of the NRA statement handed to me. It was that day that I understood we were in for a fight, one a lot of us who were in the midst of that grief didn't expect we were going to have. We thought Newtown was going to bring us all together. Unfortunately, for some, it has not.

Allison Wyatt died that day. Allison was 6 years old. Allison was an overwhelmingly kind girl.

All of these little boys and girls were kind because, frankly, that is what most little boys and girls are when they are 6 and 7 years old. They are wonderfully kind. This tragedy kills us inside because we know that 6- and 7-year-olds remind all of us about what we want to be.

Allison once gave her snack to a hungry stranger on a plane. She gave it away as a simple act of kindness. She had a passion for drawing. She wanted to be an artist when she grew up. She would cover the walls of her house with her drawings, turning every room in the Wyatts' house into her own little art studio. In fact, just before her death, she had drawn a picture for her teacher Victoria Soto, and she had written on that picture, ``I love you, Love, Allie.'' Both Victoria Soto and her student Allison Wyatt died that day. Her daycare teacher said of Allison that ``she would come and put her head down on your shoulder if she was upset. It would make her feel better. She was just such a sweet and caring girl.''

Twenty-six teachers and students died that day in Sandy Hook, and we will remember every single one of them. Twenty-eight people died that day, and we have to remember that. As much anger and often hatred as we have for the shooter and as much confusion as we have about his mother and the questions we ask about why she would give him access to those kinds of weapons, knowing how troubled he was--28 people did die that day, 26 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. But here is the thing. Every day more than that die in this country from gun violence. Every day, on average, 30 people die from gun violence across this country.

I have had this chart up for the last week, and it is hard to read if the viewer is in the gallery or in this Chamber or watching from somewhere else because each one of these little figures represents someone who has been killed by guns since December 14, 2012. In the now almost 4 months since that day--I think it is over 4 months now--over 3,400 people have died from guns all across this country.

We, as a legislative body, over the past several decades, seem to have become immune to the everyday gun violence that happens. We are just sort of used to picking up our local paper and reading about another shooting, reading about another victim, such as those who have died in my State, in New Haven and Hartford and Bridgeport, on a pretty regular basis.

This debate has to be not just about what we can do to try to lessen the likelihood that anyone has to call me and ask for advice on how they should handle the latest mass shooting in their State or their district, but it also has to be an answer to the thousands of people who are losing their lives on the streets of America due to routine, everyday gun violence. That is what the compromise that is on the floor for debate right now will do.

Since we put into place our background checks law, there have been hundreds of thousands of people who have been legally prohibited from buying guns because they were felons or they had been convicted of domestic abuse or they were judged so mentally ill that they shouldn't own guns. Hundreds of thousands of people have walked into gun stores and have been prevented from buying guns because of our background check law. The problem is that only about 60 percent of gun sales go through those background checks, and 90 percent of Americans agree we should apply background checks to as many people as we can to make sure criminals don't have guns. If criminals didn't have guns, I can virtually guarantee my colleagues that this visual would be a little less stunning than it is today. It wouldn't erase these figurines. Background checks, if they were universal, wouldn't erase the scourge of violence across this country, but it would certainly lessen the impact of this chart.

So let's talk about some of the victims of urban gun violence--of gun violence in our communities that is a 1-day story in the paper, not the multiday episode a mass shooting may be.

We can talk about someone like Kwante Feliciano. Kwante was killed just about a month ago in Hartford, CT. The shooting occurred on March 25. Kwante was shot in the chest, and a companion, 30-year-old Kelly Cooper, was shot in the head. Both of them were pronounced dead at St. Francis Hospital.

Kwante was a product of the Hartford public school system, and he was trying to do better for himself. There are a lot of kids who drop out of the Hartford public school system, but Kwante had figured out a way to graduate and was also trying to get himself employed in a tough economy. He was attending Lincoln Technical Institute, and he was studying to be an automotive technician at the time of his death. His obituary said that he was loved by everybody who came in contact with him and that what defined him to most of his friends and his family was his 100-watt smile.

Hartford is a tough place to grow up. There are a lot of kids who don't see a way out of their situation. But this young man did. He had gotten his high school diploma. He was trying to do something to make himself better by becoming an automotive technician, and he was shot dead in the chest just a few short weeks ago. Kelly, by the way, who was shot with him, leaves behind four children, four brothers, and one sister.

Kanasha Isaac was 16 years old. She was described by her friends as a social butterfly. She was full of energy and life. Her family was her center. Her uncle's home was always the place where her friends and her family congregated when they were there. Kanasha was the center of all of her family's life.

After exiting a local restaurant, Kanasha and her boyfriend got into their car. Another car pulled up beside them, blocked them as they were going into a parking space, and a man shot at their car. He shot Kanasha in the face. She died shortly thereafter at 16 years old. This was in Florida on February 24 of this year.

Kanasha was going to the local high school. She wasn't the first victim of gun violence in recent months. In December two high school classmates of hers, Coby Deleon and Natalia Trejo, were killed in a murder-suicide. Three students in this one local high school in Florida were killed in about a 2-month, 3-month period of time.

Christopher Walker was 19 years old, and he was shot on March 12 of this year in Milton, GA. It was an attempted robbery. He was a marketing student at Georgia Perimeter College, and he had just been accepted into Kennesaw State University for the upcoming fall semester. That is a big deal. He had been trying to do right for himself and his family. He had been studying marketing, and he had just gotten accepted into Kennesaw State University. He was excited about getting into that school. He was already working to pay for his degree. He was a successful salesman at a local Sears store, and he was doing all of this with a goal toward the long term. He was a great salesman. He was studying marketing.

He was going to get his degree, but he really loved music. His dream was to become a musician. Even as this 19-year-old college student was looking for a job, he was recording as much music as he could, and his goal was to

take his music and not keep the money he collected from it for himself; he was going to donate it to charity. So he was going to pursue his college degree, go out and continue to be a salesman, and do music on the side simply to make enough money to give to charity.

What an amazing kid, 19 years old. In an attempted robbery on March 12 of this year, Christopher Walker was shot dead in Milton, GA.

Dominique Boyer was 18 when he was shot in Atlanta, GA, on March 28.

All of these victims, by the way, are part of this chart. Unfortunately, I do not have to go back 6 months or a year or a year and a half to find an endless list of victims. We are just talking about March of this year.

Dominique was 18 years old and just months away from his high school graduation when he became an unintentional, innocent victim of a shooting in DeKalb County, GA. Dominique was a senior at Columbia High School and he had been planning to go to college to become an accountant.

His classmates remember him as happy, as outgoing, as a very respectful kid with a lot of friends. He was the oldest of four siblings. He was just months away; he was going to graduate this fall. He was going to go to college, and he was an unintentional, innocent victim of a shooting.

We hear this over and over and over. I have read now probably 50- or 60-plus stories of kids--18, 19 years old--who have been killed. The highest incidence of gun violence occurs to 19-year-olds, I think, followed by 18-year-olds, followed by 17-year-olds. It is really teenagers who are getting killed out there. Unfortunately, in Connecticut, it was 6- and 7-year-olds, but kids who are not much older than the kids who died in Sandy Hook are dying every day in this country from gun violence, and most of them are unintentional, innocent victims. At some level a lot of people want to believe that the people who are killed in urban gun violence are killed in connection with a crime or are wrapped up in gangs. Some of that is true, but the stories we are hearing are of good kids who were doing the right thing; who, as the President has said, were not in the wrong place at the wrong time but were in the right place at the right time.

Dominique Boyer was a respectful kid who treated everybody well but just happened to be in the way of a bullet that maybe was not designated for him but should not have been flying through the air in the first place.

Hakeem Jackson was 17 years old when he was killed a couple weeks before Dominique on March 11, 2013, in Knoxville, TN. He was just on a weekend visit to Knoxville visiting his family and his grandmother. Hakeem's mom described him as a quiet and bashful boy but sometimes a little bit of a prankster.

On a Friday night he asked his grandmother for some money. He was 17 years old. He just wanted to go down to the store. While he was walking down a street in a city that was not even his own, a gray sedan pulled up and shot Hakeem several times. Those shots eventually killed him. He was 17 years old, just visiting his grandmother in Knoxville, TN.

Let me share a couple more stories with you.

Kay Cornell Janus was on the other end of life's spectrum. She was 72 when she was shot just 1 day before Hakeem in Marietta, GA. She was known for her grace and her poise, and, again, as you have heard about a number of these victims, her radiant smile--something her family and friends remembered about her.

She was full of class. She loved fine food and wine and traveling and entertaining. Many of these hobbies became, over the course of her life, her passion. She was the mother of four, and she was the grandmother of two.

She was shot in her garage by her longtime boyfriend. Neighbors suspect that the murder may have been the result of a simple dispute they were having over finances. It ended in Kay, 72 years old, being gunned down.

Zachary Rose was killed in January of this year. He was celebrating his 22nd birthday. Two days later, after his 22nd birthday, he was killed. His loves were skateboarding and cars and dogs--dogs at the top of his list. He absolutely loved dogs, and he had a Great Dane, Mathias, that all of his friends said after he was killed was really ``his baby.''

He actually loved dogs so much that he ran his own dog training company. Zachary's friend dedicated a page of their company's Web site to help raise money for Zachary's funeral because his family was going through very tough times, and when he was killed, leaving behind three siblings--a brother and two sisters--they did not have enough money to pay for his funeral.

His friends said Zachary was the kind of guy who ``literally had no enemies''--killed by guns on January 28, 2013.

His family did not have the money to pay for his funeral. It is the story of a lot of these families. Families are already going through tough times. Luckily, a lot of these communities rally to the victims' defense to raise the money for these funerals. But think about that. Think about going through the pain and the grief of losing your child or your son or your daughter or your grandson or your sister or your brother, and then looking into your family's accounts and not even having enough money to bury them. That is the reality of what is happening across this Nation today because it happens too often.

There has been another trend in the last several months that has in some ways been even more disturbing than the overall incidence of 3,000-plus people having died across our country. We have seen a very disturbing trend, in the last several months even, of accidental deaths from guns. As we have said, there is no one solution to this plague of gun violence. It is getting tougher on our gun laws: making sure criminals do not have them who should not, trying to take some of these dangerous weapons--the assault weapons and the dangerous high-capacity ammunition--off the streets, having a better mental health system. But it is also about gun safety. It is also about making sure if someone is going to be a gun owner they be a responsible gun owner, that they put a lock on their gun and keep it away from children.

Over the past several months there have been four absolutely tragic shootings involving toddlers.

A Tennessee woman was shot in the stomach by her 2-year-old child who discovered a Glock 9 stored underneath a pillow. The child picked it out from under the pillow, discharged the weapon, and shot Rekia Kid while she was sleeping.

Josephine Fanning was shot and killed in Tennessee when a 4-year-old boy discharged a handgun owned by Fanning's husband, who had just kept the gun loaded, in his words, ``for just a moment.'' A 4-year-old boy.

A 6-year-old boy was accidentally shot and killed by his 4-year-old playmate in a quiet residential New Jersey neighborhood. ``This never should have happened,'' the victim's uncle said. ``It's horrible.''

A 3-year-old died recently of an accidental self-inflicted gun wound in South Carolina after finding a gun in an apartment and discharging the weapon.

A 2-year-old shooting his mother, a 4-year-old shooting an adult, a 6-year-old getting shot by a 4-year-old, and a 3-year-old shooting themselves--these accidental shootings are likely not going to be solved by a background check law or by a ban on high-capacity ammunition, but it just speaks to how big this problem is. It speaks to how many guns are out there.

It also speaks to the fact that as part of our debate on background checks and on specific weaponry that should be kept in the hands of the military, we should be having a conversation about gun safety as well.

Lastly, I want to talk about the importance of today.

Senator Kaine, I believe, was down on the floor earlier talking about the 6-year anniversary of the worst mass shooting in this country's history at Virginia Tech. I want to close by just telling a few final stories about those victims. I have told some of them when I have been down here before, but that shooting was in some ways just as tragic.

In Sandy Hook, we had a little glimpse into who these little boys and girls would be. When we heard these stories about their intellectual curiosity and their kindness and their grace, we had a window into what amazing people folks such as Dylan Hockley and Grace McDonnell and

Madeleine Hsu would eventually grow up to be.

In Virginia Tech, though, we had a much better window into these kids because though they had not reached maturity, they had already succeeded by getting into Virginia Tech, and we could really see the kind of contributions they were going to leave.

Austin Michelle Cloyd lived life boldly. She had traveled the world with her family. She was interested in everything from politics to environmental issues to international relations. She was a very tall girl and everybody remembered what Austin looked like because she had flaming red hair and a big, bright smile. She played basketball throughout her middle and high school years, and she worked four summers with the Appalachia Service Project to help make homes better for people--to make them warmer and safer and dryer.

She loved reading and scuba diving and music and concerts, and she was just a girl who was absolutely full of life. She lived her life for a purpose. She knew she wanted to help people.

She had a brilliant mind and a compassionate heart and she had an iron will. We will never know what Austin was going to truly grow up to be. She was killed that day at Virginia Tech.

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak was a French Canadian who had a passion for teaching French. She was a faculty member who was killed that day. Before she moved to Virginia, she was very well known for being instrumental in helping to develop a school to ensure access for francophone families who wanted a safe school environment and a French language education.

She went between Nova Scotia and southwest Virginia. She loved the bucolic countryside, and she loved to go on hikes, whether it was in Virginia or back in Nova Scotia.

She was passionate for French education. She was passionate that other people would learn the language, and she still had a lot of passion to give. But she was killed that day as well.

Matthew Gwaltney was a second-year master's student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. His professional goal was to go out and increase awareness and education about environmental issues. He wanted to encourage people to be proactive in their individual lives to try to better our environment, whether it was just leaving a smaller and more confined footprint on this world or going out and creating systems in their community to lower the impact of pollution.

His passion was environmental awareness, but he was also a big fan of sports. He was a detailed expert in sports statistics, and you could not beat Matthew in a game of trivia. He loved his Hokies and was a devoted fan, and he went to every ACC sporting event he could. Professionally, he loved the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Bulls.

Matthew was going to lead a great life--one that was lived outwardly. But we never got to see the maturity of his passion for environmental awareness, nor his passion for the hobbies he loved because Matthew was killed that day at Virginia Tech.

The list just goes on and on and on--3,400 people killed since December 14. I have in the Chamber just a few of the pictures of the young men and women who have been killed in Hartford and Bridgeport and New York and Washington and Newtown, CT. It is their memories we will honor this week as we go forward on one of the most important public safety debates this Chamber and this city has ever had.

I will be back down to the Senate floor later this week to continue to engage my colleagues in talking about the real reason we are here; that is, the victims of gun violence all across this country.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for debate only on S. 649 be extended until 5:30 p.m., and that the majority leader be recognized at that time.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am honored to be on the floor this morning to begin today's debate on this historic gun violence measure with my colleague Senator Blumenthal. I join with him in my awe of the Newtown families who are here this week. People have watched them on the news as they have gone from office to office and told the story of their loved ones. Nobody can paint a picture better as to why we need to act next week than the families of those people who lost their lives in Newtown.

There are so many stories they can tell better than anyone else. They can tell the story of their lost first graders, but they can also tell the story of the five little boys and girls who escaped that morning, who escaped when the shooter went to reload and there was a brief period of time where some kids could run out of one of those first- grade classrooms.

Better than anyone else, these families can posit as to whether their little boys and girls would still be alive if the shooter walked in with 10-round clips rather than 30-rounds clips, if he had to exchange magazines 15 times rather than 5 or 6 times. Nobody can tell that story better than these families.

What I have tried to do over the course of the last couple days is to help these families tell the story of their loved ones but to also paint a broader picture to talk about the 30 lives every day that are ended by gun violence. I think we need to talk about the victims and allow for the voices of those victims to be part of the debate, because while the tragedy in Newtown has gotten the headlines and the highlights and is certainly the reason we are standing here today, more people than were killed in Newtown die every day in this country from gun violence--on the streets of Washington and Hartford and Bridgeport and Baltimore--all across the country.

These victims need to be our imperative, whether they be the 6- and 7-year-old kids and the teachers in Newtown or the 25-year-olds and 17- year-olds who are dying every single day across our country. It has to end. The answer cannot be, as it has been for 20 years, that we are going to do nothing. So I wish to take a few minutes to continue telling these stories this morning.

I wish to begin with Dylan Hockley. Dylan's mother has probably been one of the most articulate spokesmen for this cause. His parents Nicole and Ian have been amazing in their ability to grieve and also to come down to Washington and argue their cause.

Dylan loved video games. He loved jumping on trampolines. He loved watching movies. He was autistic, but he was doing so much better. He was so proud of the fact that he had learned how to read, and he was taking out books every day from the library to bring home. His parents chose Sandy Hook Elementary School because of its great autism program.

I spoke yesterday about his paraprofessional, his special education aid, who was so wonderful to assist him in doing better every single day. Because of his autism, he was a child who loved routine and repetition, and there were a few movies he would watch over and over and over again--``Up,'' ``WALL-E,'' ``The Gruffalo''--and he would find those portions of the movies he loved so much. He would sit in front of the TV with his headphones on rewinding those portions over and over and over again, and every single time he watched those movies, he would laugh over and over and over again.

His parents have created an organization called Dylan's Wings of Change. It is a memorial fund to benefit children with autism. It is just one of a multitude of efforts that have flowed forth from this tragedy. Dylan's life was ended, but this fund is going to help make sure other kids like him have the chance to lead great, normal lives, even though they deal with complex problems such as autism.

I would be happy to yield.

I thank the Senator for his career fighting on behalf of legislation that will address gun violence. The summation of all of that work hopefully will be with us this week and next week.

I thank the Senator for his question about the Sandy Hook promise. The Sandy Hook promise, which has been signed by tens of thousands of people all across the country, came out of this tragedy because there was a recognition, as you said, that this was not a sprint, that this was a marathon, that the promise we needed to make to each other in the wake of this horrific tragedy was not just that we were going to do everything within our power, our individual powers to try to reduce the incidence of gun violence--and as Senator Durbin points out, we have more power, the 100 of us, than almost anyone else, and shame on us if we do not use it. But the Sandy Hook promise is that there are so many other things that you can do: that you can make smaller commitments in your communities to build bigger and better systems of mental health; that you can try to forge atmospheres in schools that are more inviting, that are more positive; that you can, frankly, just be nicer to your neighbors, you can be more thoughtful in your everyday interactions, knowing there could be some tragedy around the corner that takes your neighbor away from you; make sure you say everything you want to say to that person.

So this promise--a promise to do everything within our power to try to make sure this never happens again, but to bring a new level of positivity to our world in the wake of this awful violence, is one of the most important things that come from it.

We are so grateful that these families are here not just challenging us to pass specific pieces of legislation but also to make our lives change in the wake of this situation.

I thank the Senator for that comment. As he knows, there is absolutely nothing inherent in mental illness that creates a connection to violence. As the Senator said very correctly, people with mental illness are much more likely to be the victims of violence than to perpetrate a crime. The great irony coming out of this debate could be that if we make the awful mistake of equating violence with mental illness, than we will frankly make it harder for people to go out and seek treatment, not easier.

Adam Lanza was a deeply disturbed individual. His mother made awful mistakes, but she was certainly trying to figure out a way to get him help. The fact is that there are far too many families out there who do not have places to turn for treatment. That is the right thing to do independent of this debate today. We should absolutely be talking about the comprehensive commitment to ending gun violence, but the reality is that today there are way too many families who hit brick walls in trying to find mental health treatment for children.

If we were to go through this debate and somehow stereotype people with mental illness as prone to violence, then it would, frankly, create more barriers. There is a proposal out there from one of the gun lobby groups to

create a registry of everyone with mental illness across this country. It is an absolutely ludicrous idea, especially when this very same group opposes keeping a registry of everyone with guns in this country.

I take the Senator's concerns to heart.

This was a very serious incident in Newtown, but it should not cause us to take steps backward in terms of the support we give families who are looking for help for their loved ones.

I thank the majority whip. Just to add to his last comment, my constituents are amazed that we do not have a Federal law banning gun trafficking today. They are amazed that if you go into a store and buy guns legally and then walk outside that store and sell them to people who are prohibited, that you have not committed a Federal crime. There is an assumption that the Federal Government would disallow that. We have not. But hopefully at the end of this debate we will. I thank Senator Durbin for all of his fantastic work on that issue.

Let me tell a few more stories. I want to get to Senator Durbin's point and tell some stories about the victims of urban gun violence as well, but let me tell one more story from Newtown.

This is the story of our heroic principal. Dawn Hochsprung was the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School. People have heard a lot about her because she was perhaps the first to die that day. When the bullets started flying, when she heard the gunman enter through the front door, she ran straight to him. Some of the investigators have posited, given the way the crime scene shook out, that she may have even lunged for the gunman to try to stop him before he turned the corner to the first grade classrooms. She was unsuccessful. She was killed--perhaps the first that day.

The irony surrounding this day is multifold, but part of it involves the fact that one of her most recent proudest accomplishments as principal of that school was the establishment and integration of a brandnew security system, one that made sure every visitor who entered that school after 9:30 had to buzz in, had to talk to the security people, the front desk people, before they entered the school. That does not work too well when the person trying to gain entry does not need to press the buzzer but instead can take an AR-15, which sprays six bullets a second, and just knock out all of the windows.

She was a passionate educator. She dove into her work at Sandy Hook. She was one of those folks who did not sit in their office. She was out amongst the hallways at all times trying to make that place a much more positive environment.

She grew up in Connecticut. She lived in Woodbury, CT, with her husband and her two daughters and three stepdaughters. She grew up loving the outdoors. Her friends recalled that Dawn Lafferty at the time was a tomboy who loved sports in high school. She wasn't a top- level athlete, but that didn't stop her.

One of the most amazing stories I have heard about Dawn was that when she was in school at Naugatuck High School, she wanted to run with the boys track team. She wanted to run sprints. She wasn't allowed to do that. She protested to the coach, the administration, and they still said she couldn't run sprints with the boys track team. She took her case to the school board--as a high school student--and won her case. When she came back to her high school, she didn't just run sprints with the boys, but she recruited other girls to run sprints with her. She was a born leader.

Perhaps we may take some solace in the fact that so many of these other kids here--Dylan, Chase, Benjamin, Jesse, and Ana--were leaders too. They were going to do amazing things with their lives. At least we were able to know with Dawn what her true potential was. We saw that potential in the wonderful school she built.

I just spoke about Dylan. Dylan's parents came from England all the way to Sandy Hook, CT, for this school because of the programs Dawn built there. If they ever had any doubt as to whether they had chosen the right leader, they were confident of this when she ran to the gunman to try to stop the carnage from becoming worse.

Let me speak about one more little girl, age 6, Madeleine Hsu. Madeleine was, again, one of the youngest victims that day. She was a shy and relatively quiet 6-year-old, but there were certain things that would make her light up. A lot of these kids loved animals. Madeleine loved dogs. She lit up around dogs. They were her passion. She was an avid reader, and she loved running and dancing. More than anything else, she loved to wear bright, flowery dresses which matched her personality. She shared a bed with two of her sisters. They had their own rooms, but they loved each other so much, they chose to sleep together at night. They miss her dearly.

As Senator Durbin pointed out, 20 kids and 6 adults were killed in Newtown that day; 2 others, Adam and Nancy Lanza--28 total. This is less than the average number of people who are killed by gun violence across this country every day. We deserve to talk about them as well.

Before I leave the floor today, I would like to talk about a couple of the most recent victims of gun violence. One can't even really read this poster Senator Durbin referred to because each one of these little dots is an individual figure representing people who have been killed in this country since December 14. The 28 people from Newtown aren't even on this chart. We are speaking about 3,800 people who have died as a result of gun violence.

Some of these people died because they were possibly doing something

wrong or in the midst of an activity they shouldn't have been a part of. However, Chuck Walker was 15 years old and walking on his way to visit his girlfriend to deliver some new shoes he purchased for her. He was bringing a gift to his girlfriend. His family said this was a kid who never, ever was in trouble. He was walking to visit his girlfriend, and he was gunned down on the streets of Hillcrest Heights, MD, in an apparent robbery.

Marckel Worman Ross, who was 18 years old, on September 11, 2012, was walking to school. He was a member of the track team, ROTC, and was thinking about a career in the military. He was found in his school uniform still holding his backpack. It was a random act of violence on the way to school.

Moses Walker was older--40 years old. He was a police officer. He had just finished his shift in August of 2012. He was four blocks from his police station, and he was gunned down--1 year away from retirement. He was very active in his community, not only a great police officer but served as deacon of his church. He was remembered as a courteous, polite, and humble police officer--gunned down four blocks from his police station.

These are the tragedies bringing us here to the floor today. As we have this debate, we should remember that every day 30 people across this country are dying from guns. We have the power to do something about it.

I am as pleased as Senator Blumenthal about the compromise brought to this floor by Senators Manchin and Toomey. It is not perfect, but it is important. It is important because it will make our streets safer and ensure fewer criminals across this country have access to guns. It is a platform for more next week, but it is a very important start.

I will be back to the floor later today and next week to speak about more of these victims.

I yield the floor.

I come down to the floor for the second time today and maybe the fifth time over the last 2 days to talk again about the real reason we are here on the floor of the Senate this week and next week-- to talk about the scourge of gun violence across the country and its victims.

We have had a good week this week on the floor of the Senate--a breakthrough on the matter of background checks, an agreement that we hope can forge the basis of a bill next week, an agreement that maybe doesn't move us as far as some of us would like in terms of making sure criminals in this country don't have guns but that moves us very far down the line toward a day when no criminals can go onto the streets of this country with guns, and then a very positive vote today in which Democrats and Republicans joined to break a threatened filibuster.

But these are the kids we are really here to talk about, and I wanted to come down before the week was over to talk about a few more victims just to make sure we are really clear about whom and what we are talking about.

Let me tell you about Chase Kowalski, one of the 7-year-olds killed by the gunman's bullets in Sandy Hook Elementary School. He was an amazing little kid. He was an athlete. Much like Jack Pinto, whom I talked about yesterday, Chase was a young jock. He was 6 years old when he actually completed and won a kids triathlon in Mansfield, CT. He was so inspired from watching the Olympics last summer, seeing his heroes Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte do so well, that he went out and decided to learn how to swim and do it competitively. So with a little bit of help, he became a swimmer as well. His parents and surviving two older sisters, with a lot of his friends and family, ran together in honor of Chase's love for sports in a Sandy Hook 5K run that attracted thousands of people to the streets of Hartford.

Chase Kowalski could have done a lot of things. He clearly had this drive and initiative you don't find in a lot of kids who are only 7 years old. We will never really know who Chase was going to grow up to be, but he was a pretty remarkable young boy.

Jesse Lewis is here on this poster. His father, Neil Heslin, is here this week arguing and pleading for us to do something.

Jesse was a pretty amazing kid in his own right. He was 6 years old. The evening before the tragedy, he and his father had been out shopping for Christmas presents for his friends and family. One of the gifts they were going out to get was for his teacher Vicki Soto, who was killed the next morning along with him. Jesse was spending his own money on all these presents. He had $37 to spend, which he had earned by helping his father with a variety of odd jobs.

That was Jesse. He wanted to do nice things for people, but he wanted to earn the right to do it, so it wasn't the first time he had gone out and basically earned the money at 6 years old in order to buy things. But he was still a kid. He grew up on a farm, so he loved horses and dogs and chicks, and he liked to go out and fish and play soccer. His dad was always outside working on projects, and he always wanted to be with his dad Neil.

He was a pretty amazing kid with a lot of initiative and drive for a 6-year-old. We will never really know who he was going to grow up to be either.

As I have talked about on this floor over the last 2 days, although so much of the attention is on those 20 kids, the reality is that 3,300 people have died since Newtown. That is where our focus should be as well, on people such as Brian Herrera, 16 years old, a straight-A student at Miami Jackson Senior High School. Three days before Christmas of last year, only about a week after the Newtown shootings, Brian was riding his bike to his best friend's house. He was doing exactly what he should have done--going to a friend's house to work on a school project--and he was gunned down in broad daylight in the middle of the pavement. He was still carrying his red backpack--a story we heard earlier today about someone else. This was a totally random shooting. I am not sure if this has

been solved at this point, but at the time the police had absolutely no idea why this happened. But there are so many guns out on the streets today--many of them illegal guns because we don't have a gun trafficking law and we don't have a good background checks law--that these things happen.

Jeremy Lee Khaoone, 25 years old, was shot in California about 1 month ago. He was one of five brothers. His father had just lost his wife. He was a native of Stockton, CA, an ironworker. He was always cheerful and smiling. Jeremy was killed by gun violence, and he left behind a 3-year-old son in February of this year.

Every single day 30 people in this country die from gun violence. You can't even see the differentiation between the little figurines on this chart because it happens so often. So I have been coming down to the floor not to hold time but just to remind my colleagues of whom we are really talking and the fact that what we are proposing to do next week really will make a difference.

If we want to get all these illegal guns off the street, then we can't just accept the status quo. We have to do something about it. It is ridiculous that we don't have a Federal law that bans gun trafficking. It is not OK that perhaps 4 out of every 10 guns in this country are sold without background checks. A person shouldn't be able to walk into a school or a movie theater or a church with a 100-round drum of ammunition. There is no reason for it.

We are not going to wipe gun violence off the face of this Earth, but we have to remember these victims. We have to remember the Jeremies, we have to remember the Jesses, we have to remember the Brians and the Charlottes and the Madeleines and all of these people who have lost their lives. We can't bring them back, but we can certainly make sure that 3 or 4 months from now this chart is a little bit smaller. We have the ability to do that.

I will be back next week with other stories of victims--from Connecticut, to Colorado, to Tucson, to New York City, to Chicago, to Miami--so that as we move into maybe the most critical week on the floor of this body with respect to the debate on gun violence in decades, we are really sure about whom we are talking about and the difference we can make.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it goes without saying we all do our jobs here and we seek a seat in the Senate for a reason. We decided to run for this high office because of issues which deeply motivated us, whether it be more affordable health care, better housing, or lower taxes. In a job like this we are driven to find the issues which move us. Then sometimes there are issues which find us.

When I was elected to the Senate last November, I never imagined my maiden speech would be about guns or about gun violence. I could have never imagined I would be standing here in the wake of 20 young children dying in Sandy Hook or the six adults who protected them. Sometimes issues find you.

Here I am, pleased to have the majority leader, the majority whip, and so many of my colleagues on the Senate floor with me here today.

I wish to start with the unpleasant part. I think it is important for all of my colleagues to understand why we are having this debate this week and next week about gun violence, why for the first time in decades we were able to break the logjam to do something about the waves of gun violence which have plagued this Nation. It is easy to avert our eyes from the horror of what happened in Newtown. It is just easy to close our ears and pretend it didn't happen.

We can't ignore the reality because it is here. On a disturbingly regular basis it is here--in Columbine, Tucson, Aurora, and Sandy Hook. The next town's name is just waiting to be added to the list if we do nothing. Here is what is happening.

Sometime in the early morning hours of December 14, a very disturbed, reclusive young man named Adam Lanza went into his mother's room and shot her dead in her sleep. A few minutes later, maybe hours later, he took his mother's car and drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School. By 9:35 he shot his way through locked doors with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, which was owned by his mother.

He began a methodical 10-minute rampage which left 20 children, all 6 and 7 years old, and six adults who cared for them, dead. In 10 minutes, Adam Lanza shot off 154 rounds from a gun which could shoot up to six bullets a second. This high-powered gun assured every single child Adam Lanza shot died. Lanza shot most kids multiple times. Noah Pozner was shot 11 times alone.

The State's veteran medical examiner, who had been on the job for decades, said he had never seen anything such as this.

Several children did escape. Six kids were courageously hid in a classroom closet by their teacher, Victoria Soto, who shielded her kids from the bullets and died that day. Five other kids ran out of the room when Lanza had trouble reloading. Five kids are alive today because the shooter needed to stop and switch ammunition magazines. Whether it is because he had trouble reloading again or because the police were coming into the building at about 9:45, Lanza turned one of his weapons on himself and the massacre ended, but not before 26 people were dead.

This is reality. The worst reality is if we don't do something right now, it is going to happen again.

It is happening every day. To this country, which has become so callously used to gun violence, it is raindrops, background noise. The reality is the one in which we are losing 30 Americans a day to gun violence.

This chart illustrates how many people have died since December 14 and it is almost unreadable because it is a cast of thousands. This reality is just as unacceptable as what happened in Sandy Hook that day.

The question is, Are we going to do anything about it or will we just sit on our hands as we have for 20 years and accept the status quo with respect to everyday gun violence and these increased incidences of mass shooting? If we are really serious about doing our jobs, we can.

Outside the beltway this isn't a debate; this isn't a discussion. Eighty-seven percent of Americans think we should have universal background checks. Everybody who buys a gun should prove he or she is not a criminal. Two-thirds of Americans think we should restrict these high-capacity ammunition clips. Seventy-six percent of Americans believe we should crack down on people who buy guns legally and then go out and sell them in the community illegally.

The American public knows we need to do something. Why have we been stuck for so long? First, it is because Members of Congress have been listening to the wrong people. We should be listening to gun owners. They are comprised of a lower percentage of Americans than 30 years ago.

About one-third of Americans today own guns, and they are very important constituents. The problem is the NRA doesn't speak for gun owners like it used to. Yet we listen to that organization more than we should.

Ten years ago the NRA came here and argued for universal background checks in the wake of Columbine. Today they oppose those background checks even though 74 percent of NRA members support universal background checks. I don't know the exact reason for that, but maybe it is because increasingly the NRA is financed not by its members--by everyday, commonsense gun owners--but by the gun industry. Tens of millions of dollars come into the NRA from the gun industry--a program that actually allows the NRA to make a couple bucks off of every gun sold in many gun stores across the country. We are not listening to gun owners. If we were, this wouldn't be a debate in this Chamber.

But secondly, and maybe most importantly, we have really botched a conversation in this place about rights, and rights really are at the core of this debate. When I am back home in Connecticut, I hear a lot of people talking about the right to bear arms as an ``unalienable right'' or a ``God-given right,'' and of course the Constitution makes no such claim. The idea of an unalienable right is actually found in the Declaration of Independence, and it is a phrase we know very well.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with

certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,

liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But liberty isn't just about having any gun you want anytime you want it; liberty has to also be about the right to be free from indiscriminate violence. I mean, what kind of liberty did these kids have in that classroom in Newtown, being trapped by an assault

weapon-yielding madman? And maybe more importantly, what kind of liberty does a kid just up the street from here in Washington, DC, have when he fears for his life every time he wants to walk to the corner store or walk home from school? That is not the kind of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness our Founding Fathers talked about.

But even if we do accept that part of liberty is owning and using a gun, then we have to ask ourselves these questions: To what degree are our liberties really infringed upon if we just suggest there are a handful of weapons that are too dangerous to own? To what extent are our freedoms trampled upon by just saying you are going to need to reload your semiautomatic weapon after every 10 bullets rather than after every 30 bullets? How gravely do we really risk tyranny when we just moderately restrain the size of a legally purchasable clip?

If liberty is really our chief concern, then preserving and protecting the life of little kids has to weigh pretty favorably against marginally restraining a weapon's payload. If we can't agree on that, what can we agree on?

If we accept this balance, then the policy prescriptions are pretty simple:

First, guns should be available, but they should be available to people of sound mind with no criminal record. We have believed that for a long time. Since the Brady bill was passed, we have had about 2 million people who were stopped from buying guns because they were legally prohibited from doing so. The Brady bill has worked. The problem is that 40 percent of weapons sold in this country don't go through background checks. I hope we will have some good news by the end of the day on this front, but that is a pretty easily accepted premise--criminals shouldn't own guns.

Second, a small number of guns are just too dangerous for retail sale. We have always accepted that premise as well. We have always drawn a line and said some weapons are reserved for military hands, and others can be in the hands of private citizens. We know assault weapons kill, and we know what happened when we banned them the last time: Gun homicides dropped by 37 percent, and nonlethal gun crimes dropped by an equal percentage.

Third, some ammunition too easily enables mass slaughter. What legitimate reason is there for somebody to be able to walk into a movie theater or a religious institution or a school with a 100-round drum of ammunition? Why do we need that--100 rounds, never mind 30 rounds? That doesn't sound too radical, does it?

So what does the gun lobby tell us about these ideas? What do they say is wrong with this approach that is grounded in data and supported by people all across the country? Well, specifically we hear two things over and over again: First, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun, and second, guns don't really kill people, people kill people.

As to the first argument, Newtown is part of the answer. Nancy Lanza probably owned guns for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons was that she was divorced, she lived alone, and she wanted guns to protect herself. She was alone a lot of the time. The guns Nancy Lanza used weren't used to fire upon intruders into her home; they killed her, and they killed 26 other boys and girls and parents. That is not just an anecdote, that is a reflection of a statistical trend. If you have a gun in your house, it is four times more likely to be used in an accident than it is against an intruder. If you own a gun, it is much more likely to be used to kill you than it is to kill someone trying to break into your home.

As to the second argument, as author Dennis Henigan once put it, guns don't kill people; they just enable people to kill people. Guns are employed in only about 4 percent of felonies, but they are used in 20 percent of all felonies involving bodily injury. Guns enable violence that is vastly more violent.

How do we know this? Well, we know it by what happened at Sandy Hook that day, but more importantly we know it by what happened on that very same day on the entire other side of the world. On the same day that 20 kids died in Newtown, in Henan, China, a madman walked into a school and attacked 23 schoolchildren with a deadly weapon. The same day--20 kids in Newtown, 23 kids in China. In Newtown, all 20 kids who were attacked died; in China, all 23 kids who were attacked lived. Why? Because in Henan, the assailant had a knife, not a gun that could spray six bullets a second.

So forgive me if I dismiss those--like the president of the NRA--who choose to ignore the effect of the laws we are debating this week and next week. He said all we are talking about here is feel-good legislation. Well, he is right about one thing: It would feel really good if Daniel Barden got on the bus this morning to go to school. Daniel was an immensely compassionate little kid. He was always sitting next to the kids in school who sat alone. He never left a room without turning the lights off. When his family would go to the grocery store, they would leave the store and get halfway across the parking lot and turn around and Daniel wouldn't be there because he was still holding the door open for people who needed a way out. And he loved s'mores.

It would feel really good if Ana Marquez Greene could still sing all those songs she loved. She sang and performed everywhere she went. She came from a very musical family. Her mom said that she didn't walk anywhere, that her preferred mode of transportation was dancing. She loved most to sing and dance in church. She loved it when her parents read to her from the Bible.

It would feel really good if Ben Wheeler got to enjoy this beautiful spring day outside today. He was a piano virtuoso. He had already done a recital when he was 6 years old. But what he really loved was playing outside with his older brother Nate. They loved to play soccer together. The morning he was killed, he told his mom, as they were leaving for school, he wanted to be a paleontologist when he grew up. He said, ``That's what Nate's going to be, and I want to do everything that Nate does.''

So that is our task--to beat back all the naysayers who say that we can't do this, that we won't change the way things are. I believe we can. I believe we are good enough to drown out the voices of the status quo and the lobbyists and the political consultants. I think that in the next couple of weeks we are good enough to change the way things are.

Finally, I want to tell you one last story to explain why I know we are good enough. I believe that when we see people in need, when we see children stripped of their dignity, we are too compassionate a people to close our eyes. I know sometimes we wonder what we really are inside. Are we truly good or is goodness a learned behavior? And it may sound strange, but after December 14, I just know the former to be true, because after enduring the shooting, as if to swallow up those 10 minutes of evil, millions of acts of infinite kindness rained down on Newtown, from the teachers who protected those kids, to the firefighters who didn't leave that firehouse for days afterward, to the millions of actions of humanity and gifts and phone calls that came in from the rest of the world.

And because of Anne Marie Murphy. Anne Marie was a special education teacher charged with the care of Dylan Hockley, this little boy, a wonderful, gentle little 6-year-old boy who was living with autism but doing great at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Anne Marie loved Dylan, and Dylan loved Anne Marie back. There was a picture on his refrigerator of Anne Marie, and almost every day he would point to Anne Marie with pride to his parents.

Nicole, his mom, who is here this week, said at Dylan's funeral that when she realized Dylan wasn't going to show up at the firehouse that day with all the other kids who were returning from the school, she hoped she would see Mrs. Murphy, but she knew she wouldn't. She knew Anne Marie wouldn't leave Dylan's side if he was in danger. And she didn't. When the bullets started flying, she brought Dylan into her arms. She held him tight inside that classroom. And that is just how the two of them were found.

On Monday, Nicole flew down here to Washington with President Obama and me to try to make the case that things need to change for Dylan, for Anne Marie, and for the thousands of other people before and after who have been killed by guns.

As Nicole and the other parents walked up the steps of Air Force One, one mom raised a piece of paper above

her head with a note she had scribbled on it that day, and the cameras caught the moment. The note simply said ``Love Wins.'' I believe today more than I ever have before that if we are truly doing our job in this Chamber, then love has to win every single time.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Florida for those very thoughtful remarks and, of course, my colleague, the senior Senator from Connecticut.

We are here on the floor today to help lead a discussion about how this Nation can finally own up to its responsibility to take on the scourge of gun violence that has certainly been highlighted by the massacre in Sandy Hook that I spoke about earlier today in my first speech before this Chamber. But it has, frankly, become too routine throughout the streets of this country, with 3,000 to 4,000 people having lost their lives to gun violence since Sandy Hook happened.

Lost in a lot of the debate here about the particular policy prescriptions we are talking about, whether it be universal background checks supported by 90 percent of Americans or a ban on high-capacity magazines supported by two-thirds of Americans or a Federal law ending illegal gun trafficking supported by three-fourths of Americans, lost amidst all of the political back-and-forth over negotiations between Republicans and Democrats and the pronouncements of the NRA and of gun control groups, lost amidst all of that debate about politics and policy are the victims. The victims are the people--boys and girls, men and women, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters--who die every single day in this country. I described it this morning--like raindrops. It is just background noise to this country now, the number of people who are dying every day.

I decided after having given my maiden speech this morning that I would come back to this floor--not to occupy the floor or commandeer the floor, but to the extent that there is time today and tomorrow and next week, to spend time on this floor telling the stories of the victims, telling the stories of the individual people whose lives were tragically cut short by guns--because it happens here more so than almost every other nation in the world. More people lose their lives, more people have their lives ended prematurely because of guns here than almost any other corner of the world.

It is time that we do something about it. Yes because of the aggregate numbers, yes because of the horror in Sandy Hook, but also because every single additional life that is cut short is a failure of our responsibility to do something about it. So I am going to spend some time down on the Senate floor in between others giving speeches today and tomorrow and next week to talk about these victims, to just tell you a little bit about who they are--especially for the little ones, maybe who they were going to be.

Let me start in Newtown. Let me start in Sandy Hook. We can put up some pictures of just a handful of the victims from Sandy Hook and from cities across this country. Let me start with the little guy in the middle, Daniel Barden. I talked about him this morning.

Daniel was a pretty amazing little boy. His parents talked about the unbelievable compassion he had. I talked about it this morning. He never failed to turn off a light when he left a room. He was always the kid in school who was sitting with the kid who did not have anybody to sit with. When his parents would leave a grocery store they would get halfway across the grocery store parking lot, turn around, and Daniel wasn't with them because he was still holding the door open for other people who were leaving the store. He was a pretty amazing little kid. He loved to spend time with his family. He loved riding the waves at the beach. You can see with that long hair he was a beach bum.

He played drums in a band with his brother James and sister Natalie. His family is very musical, so on that morning his father, who is a professional musician--he is here this week, actually--taught him how to play Jingle Bells.

He woke up very early that morning. It was funny because he was the last of the three kids to go to school. They were all in separate schools. His parents thought it was strange that on that morning he woke up early. In fact it was the first day all year--this was December 14, so they had been in school for months--it was the first day in the entire year that Daniel had awaken before his oldest sibling went to school.

As the oldest sibling was walking down the driveway to go to school, Daniel ran after him to tell him that he loved him. The first time, he had never done that all year. It just shows what a compassionate little kid Daniel was. I actually wear a bracelet for Daniel. It is a bracelet that links to a Facebook page called ``What Would Daniel Do?'' It has 16,000 ``likes.'' The point of this page is people can hear about a lot of these kids. The families have done a lot of amazing things to try to spread the word about who these kids were and what they were going to be. Daniel's page is, ``What Would Daniel Do?'' It is a forum for people to invest in little acts of kindness to try to live up to the inspiration this little 6-year-old set for his family and his neighborhood.

So people posted stories on that Web site for the last several months about

these little kind acts they performed: For example, the woman who bought coffee and donuts for a firehouse in her home State of New York, the Missouri woman who helped restock a food pantry in Daniel's honor, the Illinois woman who paid for a stranger's meal and on the back of the bill wrote: ``Love, from Daniel Barden.''

Daniel was going to grow up to be an amazing young man. He loved life. He did amazing things for people. But we did not get to know Daniel Barden later in life because he was gunned down that day in Sandy Hook.

Let me tell the story of someone equally amazing whom we got to know for 20 more years than the kids that she was charged with looking after. Her name is one that you might know, and that is Victoria Soto. Victoria Soto was 27 years old. She was a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That is what she wanted to do. She had wanted to be a teacher, her mom said, since she was 3 years old. Imagine knowing what you want to do when you are 3 years old and sticking with it. A lot of people think they know what they want to do when they are 3, but they change their minds. She did not. She worked every day from the time she was 13 to get ready to be a teacher. As early as 13 she was charting out her classes so she could ultimately be a teacher. Even when she got to Sandy Hook Elementary School she made time for night classes at Southern Connecticut State University where she was getting her master's degree in special education.

A mentor of hers said she was the last one who would have wanted hero status, but nobody was surprised to hear what she did in that classroom that day. When Adam Lanza walked into her classroom, Victoria Soto was the only person he saw. Why? Because she had ushered her special education teacher, Anne Marie Murphy, and several of her kids under a desk. She had pushed a number of other kids into a closet to hide them. Lanza came into the classroom, he faced her and killed her. Then he killed the kids who were under the desk. The kids who hid in the closet, many of them lived. Many of them survived--they were discovered after the incident--because of the heroic actions of this one 27-year- old teacher.

Imagine what she could have done with the rest of her life. Students loved her. Parents loved her. She was made for teaching. Think of all of the impact. She probably had 30 more years in the classroom. She had hundreds if not thousands of kids she still could have touched with her life--gone. Victoria Soto's genius as a teacher will no longer be able to be realized because of what happened that day.

If we do not do something about it, Victoria Soto will not be the last teacher who is going to be gunned down. If we don't take some steps here this will not be the last selfless educator we will mourn on the Senate floor.

Let me tell a little about Charlotte Bacon, 6 years old. I lost count of the number of funerals and wakes that I went to, but I do remember Charlotte's funeral. She had this crazy head of curly red hair. She was described by her family as sweet and outgoing and exuberant, someone who was willing to argue for whatever she believed in, even at 6 years old. She loved the color pink, and she loved animals--any animal she met--but she really loved her golden retriever. She wanted to become a veterinarian. A lot of these kids we will hear about today knew what they wanted to do with their lives. These were ambitious kids, in part because they had special parents as well.

She was really looking forward to Christmas because she wanted to show off this new pink dress and pink boots she had gotten. It was a Christmas outfit, so she was waiting until Christmas to be able to show it off. But on the morning of December 14--again, another theme we will hear is that these strange things happened that morning--that morning she woke up and she wanted to wear that pink dress. She wanted to wear those pink boots, and her mother let her do it. She wore that special pink dress and those boots to school on Friday, December 14.

Her family has established a nonprofit called Newtown Kindness. The organization is comprised of community members who were trying to bring positivity and strength back to the Newtown community. I talked this morning about the fact that for many of us who have lived through this tragedy--not anywhere close to the way in which the victims' families have--but what we see Newtown defined by is not the 10 minutes of violence and evil, but all the millions of acts of humanity that have spilled forth from inside the community and from outside the community in the days and weeks since, and this is what Newtown Kindness is about. It is encouraging children to do their own acts of kindness like Charlotte did and submit their stories through drawings and letters to the organization. Newtown Kindness is going to show some light on all these little wonderful things that kids do every day in the same way that Charlotte did for the kids she loved and the family members she loved and for the animals she loved.

Let me talk a little bit about another teacher, Rachel Davino. Rachel was very much like Victoria, in that she knew she wanted to work with kids. She had a lot of interests, Rachel Davino did. She was born in Waterbury, received her undergraduate degree from Hartford, she got her masters from Post University. She loved animals. That is probably why she connected with a lot of these kids. She loved baking and photography and karate. She drew lots of things, loved to draw animals--dogs, frogs, anything with scales or feathers or fur she loved to draw. But her passion was working as a behavioral therapist, working with kids with autism. There were a number of kids in these classrooms who had autism. They were doing great because of the work of people like Rachel and Anne Marie Murphy, who reached out to work with these kids.

Rachel was exceptional because she integrated these kids into her daily life. She brought the kids to her home. She involved the kids in her family. She treated the kids like family and they matured. They did better under her care.

She probably didn't know it when she died, but her best friend and her boyfriend, Tony, was about to propose to her. In fact he had already gone to her parents to ask permission to ask to marry her. He was going to do it on Christmas Eve, just 10 days after the incident. He didn't get to ask for Rachel's hand in marriage. Instead, the wedding ring he had planned to present to her was placed on her finger before she was buried.

Rachel was an amazing teacher, an amazing person who invested herself in these kids, day in and day out. It would have been great to know what Rachel Davino would have become as she matured as an educator.

This is just a sampling of the stories from 1 day in Newtown, CT. Fewer kids and adults died in Newtown that day than die every day across this country. We think how exceptional it was and how awful and how horrific that we lost 20 kids and 6 adults--and, by the way, 2 others in Adam Lanza and his mother--yet that number is less than the average number of people who are killed every day by gun violence across this country. So I want to talk about them too. I want to talk about just over the last couple of weeks and months what we have witnessed across this country.

I want to talk about Hadiya Pendleton in Chicago. We have heard a lot about her because she was here for the Presidential inauguration. She was performing with her school's majorette team in the President's inauguration festivities. She loved performing. She was an honor student at King College Prep High School in Chicago. She was 15 years old.

She is remembered by her friends as somebody who was always raising her hand in class. She had all the right answers in that chemistry class. She wore bright lip gloss that made her stand out. She loved to dance. She danced on the Praise Dance Ministry in her church, and she was a member of her cheerleading team as well. She liked Chinese food, she loved Fig Newtons. She was thinking about going to college, thinking about either journalism or pharmacology, two pretty different things. Either way, she wanted to go to Harvard. She knew where she wanted to go.

She was 15 years old. She was shot and killed while standing with her friends in a park in Chicago after she took her final exams, just days after she came back from Washington, DC,

probably one of the most amazing experiences in her life.

I watched some of that parade, and I always think to myself whether I saw her performing with her majorette team. She was 15 years old. She was going to go to Harvard. She was going to become a journalist or a great dancer. All the things we missed just because she was standing in the way of a bullet at a park with her friends after she took her final exams.

I think about Lavanial Williams, who in January of this year, was visiting with his mother and two sisters in Marin City, CA, to celebrate his 17th birthday. He was checking in on his sister April to make sure she was fine because there was some suspicious activity going on in the housing complex that day. He went downstairs to check out the commotion, and moments later he was shot dead just because he walked down some stairs to check out some commotion.

The deputies who arrived on the scene found a group of people trying to revive the teenager by CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. He had been hit by several bullets. He was there visiting his mother and two sisters to celebrate his 17th birthday. Lavanial Williams died on January 11, 2013.

If we talk about the connection to the background checks piece of this discussion, we could talk about Annemarie Bautch. She returned home after dropping off her kids at school on April 8--just a week or so ago--in Milwaukee. Her live-in boyfriend pulled in behind her in a taxicab he drove for hire. He walked to her van's window and shot her in the head. He then took his gun and turned it on himself.

He was on probation for recent domestic violence incidences involving his daughter. He had beaten up his daughter. He had firearms arrests going back 20 years. He was a convicted felon, and he was prohibited from carrying weapons. I don't have in front of me why he had the weapon that day or how he got it, but he was not supposed to have it. He had a long rap sheet when it came to convictions regarding firearms.

He was ordered to undergo anger management training after his most recent conviction, but it is unclear as to whether that ever happened. He is not here to answer those questions and neither is his girlfriend Annmarie who died that day at the age of 39 after dropping her kids off at school.

Earlier this week in Akron, OH, there was a 28-year-old man who was fatally shot while taking garbage to a trash bin in the parking lot of a McDonald's restaurant at which he worked. He was taking garbage to a trash dump and he was shot and died. His name has not been released, but he had been working at that McDonald's for 10 years. His coworkers said: ``He was the kind of person who would give you his last dollar.'' He would give his coworkers gifts on holidays--Christmas and Thanksgiving. He worked in McDonald's. He could not have had a lot of money to go out and buy gifts for coworkers. He worked at that place for a decade. Because of his generous nature with whatever money he had, that he scraped together, he made sure people knew he loved them.

He was 28 years old when he died earlier this week in Akron, OH.

This stuff is happening every day. I mean, I will keep on going through them, but this is happening every day throughout this country. People are dying on our streets by casual gun violence while bringing garbage to a dumpster outside a McDonald's, walking down the stairs to check out some commotion at a sister's housing complex, and pulling into a driveway after dropping their kids off at school. These were not people who were going out and looking for trouble. These were people who were just doing their regular everyday business.

President Obama came to Connecticut on Monday, and he told the story of a mother who was so frustrated at the phrase regarding her daughter's death due to gun violence that her daughter was ``in the wrong place at the wrong time.'' She just happened to be in the way of a stray bullet. Her mother's point was, no; she was in the right place at the right time. She was walking to school.

This guy was bringing garbage to the dumpster. Anne Marie was coming home after dropping off her kids. Lavanial was just looking out for his sister. They were not in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. Yet they were gunned down. We have no answer? After 20 years of this, we are not able to step up and do something about it? It is like raindrops. It has just become routine.

Let me go back to Newtown and talk more about these kids. Olivia Rose Engel was a bright-eyed, brunette, 6-year-old girl. She loved school. She particularly loved reading and math, which is good because a lot of what first graders do is reading and math. If you love reading and math, you are probably in good shape.

Her favorite stuffed animal was a lamb, and her favorite colors were--a theme we will hear often--pink and purple. She was set to play an angel in her church's nativity play on the night of the tragedy. She laughed a lot, and her parents said she just lit up a room when she walked in.

Olivia played soccer and tennis, and she took art classes. She loved swimming and ballet classes, and she took hip-hop dance lessons. She was also involved in her Daisy Girl Scouts. Every night when they gathered for dinner, her family would have Olivia say grace.

She was a great big sister. Olivia really loved her little 3-year-old brother Brayden. She was killed that day in Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Josephine Gay celebrated her seventh birthday just 3 days before the tragedy. Joey is what she was called by her family. She was a kid with an indomitable spirit. She was autistic, as were a handful of these kids, but she was still social. She was very affectionate. She was getting very good care from some of these paraprofessionals who were there.

She grew up--actually not too far from here--in Maryland with a house full of Ravens fans. Josephine fell in love with the color purple. I don't know if she bought into the Ravens as a team yet, but she loved the color purple. She had a great sense of humor; she smiled all the time.

She loved hugs even though she participated in rigorous therapy for her disability. She had treatment on a daily basis. She did it without complaining. She loved her Barbie dolls, her iPad, and her computer. She loved to sing and swim and be anywhere her sisters were. Joey Gay was killed that day at age 7 in Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I want to talk about Avielle Richman. I have gotten to know Avielle's parents pretty well over the course of the last few months. Frankly, I have gotten to know a lot of these families over the last few months.

Avielle's parents have done something remarkable, which I will mention, but first I will talk about Avielle.

Guess what color Avielle loved. She loved the color pink. She loved to wear her pink cowboy boots and adored riding her pony Betty. She turned 6 years old just about 2 months before the tragedy.

She moved from Connecticut a few years ago from San Diego. She loved San Diego. She was barefoot all the time. She would run on the beaches of San Diego until the Sun went down. Her relatives used to joke about how hard it was to get shoes on Avielle even after moving to Connecticut. When she lived in San Diego, she never used to wear shoes, so she certainly was not going to wear them even in a colder climate like Connecticut.

She had curly brown hair and an infectious smile. Her parents kept a blog about her. They called her their little hummingbird. She loved horseback riding, swimming, ice skating, and superhero adventures. She loved pretending to be a superhero. She loved the movie ``Brave,'' and Avielle tried out archery, which is a brave thing for her parents to do as well. She tried out archery because of her love for the movie.

Before her life was taken that December, Avielle was obsessed with an Easy Bake Oven she was hoping to get for Christmas.

Her parents are scientists, and in the wake of Avielle's death, they started a nonprofit to raise money to try to get to the root cause of the illness that caused someone like Adam Lanza to pick up a gun. That is an amazing thing for the Richmans to do. I talked about a number of efforts that have been taken, whether it is a Facebook

page for Daniel Barden, a Web site to try to encourage kids to engage in acts of kindness, or what Avielle's parents did. This is an amazing thing for them to do. While they are grieving, they are trying to find a silver lining in all of this.

The Richmans' hope is that they can use the memory of their precious 6-year-old daughter to go out and raise money to try to research the causes of the illness that led to this tragedy. It is an illness. We talk about it in terms of evil, and I have certainly used that term. It is really illness masquerading as evil.

The Richmans are going to do their part to raise money to try to do a better job to figure out what is going on in the brain to cause someone to leave their parents' home, drive to an elementary school, and start shooting, or walk up to a McDonald's employee as they are delivering garbage to the dumpster and shoot them. It is a different kind of illness, I suppose, but it deserves examination nonetheless.

The Richmans are heroic in the fact that they have decided to reach out and try to make this discovery.

Another teacher to talk about is Lauren Rousseau. She wanted to be a teacher so badly. She was 30 years old. Up to the point she was hired as a full-time substitute teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, she spent 6 years working at part-time jobs just to make ends meet so she could substitute teach during the day. During that 6-year period of time, she was looking for a full-time job, and she finally found it. That October she had been hired in Newtown to be a full-time substitute teacher. It is just what Lauren wanted to do, and she was really good at it. She was literally on the verge of realizing that 6-year dream when her life was taken.

She was very bubbly and outgoing. She spent the morning of December 14 looking forward to a movie she was going to see that night with her friends and her boyfriend, ``The Hobbit.'' She was a huge fan of Tolkien, so it was a big deal to see ``The Hobbit'' that evening, and that is what she was talking about that morning.

She loved animals too. She was passionate about doing something about child poverty. Part of the reason she went into education was she believed she needed to live her life in a way that was going to reach out and eradicate the scourge of child poverty.

Purple was her favorite color, and so everybody at her funeral wore the color purple.

She was a huge UConn basketball fan. In particular, she was a big fan of the UConn women's basketball team. So if Lauren is looking down from up above, she is very happy because her UConn women are national champions again. She would have been watching that game last night, and hopefully she was.

Lauren Rousseau was right there. Her dream was within her grasp, what she had worked for all of her life, and in an instant it was gone.

Teachers, little girls, and little boys who could have been great people, great educators--they could have been dancers and singers. Daniel Barden said he wanted to be a paleontologist just like his older brother. He could have done great things, but he is gone.

This isn't the first massacre we have seen. Daniel Barden and Ana Marquez-Green and Dylan Hockley and Benjamin Wheeler--these are all kids who were killed in Newtown, CT, but unfortunately Newtown is just the latest in a line of mass shootings. Forty percent of the mass shootings that have happened in this Nation's history have happened since the assault weapons ban expired. Forty percent of all of the mass shootings in this Nation's history have happened in the last 8 years--8 years--since the assault weapons ban expired. I am not an expert in cause and correlation, but that cannot be a coincidence. It can't be a coincidence because we also know that during those 10 years of the assault weapons ban, along with a ban on high-capacity magazines that was in effect, we saw a 37-percent decrease in gun violence. We saw a two-thirds decrease in the crimes committed with assault weapons. Those are real numbers, real reductions in overall gun violence and in gun violence perpetrated with these dangerous assault weapons. But the minute that ban was lifted, a dramatic increase in these mass shootings occurred.

Newtown was the second worst school shooting. It is seared in our memories in a different way because these were precious, young, little kids, and we can't help but grieve in a fundamentally different way for 6- and 7-year-olds. But Virginia Tech was worse. Still to this day, Virginia Tech saw the highest number of people gunned down. So I wish to talk about a few of those people.

Ross Alameddine was a Virginia Tech sophomore. He loved computer games, and he actually played a lot of them competitively. He was very much into home computer repair, and it was something he wanted to do with his life. His customers always loved him because they would bring their computers to him and he was one of the few people who knew how to fix them.

He did a lot of stuff outside of his fascination with computers. He loved rollerblading, whether it was in between classes or going out for long rollerblading expeditions on nice days. He loved movies, and he loved music. He played the piano, and he actually sang at a local coffeehouse. He had a fondness for language. He had strong opinions too. He was part of the debate club at Austin Prep, where he went to school. He talked in every single one of these classes. We know these kids who always have something to say, and Ross was definitely one of them.

He loved life. He sought to make other people laugh. He used his music to do that. One of his classmates, Liz Hardwick, remembered his many qualities. She said that Ross's wit, humor, and insightfulness made him so much fun to be around, but his caring for others was also always present. Ross was one of the 32 victims killed during the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007.

Christopher James Bishop--``Jamie'' Bishop--was a German teacher who was shot at the age of 35. He was a dedicated husband and son. He was a gentle colleague. He was a really generous friend.

He had a long ponytail that he wore. That was kind of Jamie's signature. But he didn't keep the ponytail for long because once he grew it, he would regularly cut his hair and donate it to Locks of Love. He was doing it for style reasons, I am sure, but he saw his ponytail as a means to donate to other people who needed some help.

He was another techno guru. He knew a lot about complicated gadgets, and one of those was cameras. He was a great technician with a camera, but he was also a very avid photographer. Jamie leaves behind a lot of wonderful art that captured the intensity and the beauty that surrounded him in Blacksburg.

He hailed from a very small town--Pine Mountain, GA--and he was a big fan of the Atlanta Braves, so he would probably be pretty excited about the start the Atlanta Braves have had this year.

He was a foreign language teacher. He was a tough teacher--``Herr Bishop'' is what they called him--but he really believed that understanding language was a way for people to engage in the world. It was a joy, but it was really fundamental to understanding humanity. If people understand languages, they understand different cultures and they understand something more about what it means to be a human being in this world. Jamie believed in what he did not just because he wanted to teach kids German but because he wanted to teach kids about the world. He died at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, at the age of 35.

Brian Bluhm was a graduate student. He was a TA at Virginia Tech. He cared about water resources--something we actually are going to be talking about here pretty soon--something not a lot of graduate students think about. He cared deeply about a just distribution of water assets across the country, and that is what he was working on at Virginia Tech.

But his real love was for God. He was dedicated to building a relationship through his church with his God.

He was one of the friendliest guys one could ever meet, his friends said. He had a smile for everybody.

He was a big sports fan. Brian grew up with a passion for sports, particularly baseball, and his favorite team was the Detroit Tigers. He was one of these guys who follow everything about their favorite team. He watched all the games, but when the Tigers weren't playing in the winter and in

the early spring, he would be analyzing every statistic from the past season and getting ready for the next season. He also loved Virginia Tech sports, especially football and basketball. He was one of those people others would see on TV who came to all of the games with the colors on their chests to show their support.

His family says he will be remembered for his love of God, family, friends, the Detroit Tigers, and Virginia Tech. He was lost that day, April 16, 2007, as well.

Ryan Christopher Clark was known to his friends as ``Stack.'' He maintained a 4.0 GPA when he was a student at Virginia Tech, and he was a kid who had a mastery of science. He had a triple major. I didn't even know one could have a triple major, but Stack had a triple major in psychology, biology, and English. Can my colleagues imagine what Stack was going to be able to do with his life? Can we imagine what he would have been able to contribute in his life with a triple major?

He was a leader on campus. He played baritone in the Marching Virginians university band, and he was a resident adviser. So he was doing great things on campus and passing along a lot of knowledge to kids underneath him.

His friends said: He was a wonderful part of our baritone section. He was fun. He was loving. He was a delightful person to be around. He cared so much for other people. He would befriend anyone. He was a light and he was a joy.

Ryan Christopher Clark was going to do great things with his life. He was a student leader. At his young age, he had already shown a compassion for his fellow students by being a resident adviser. He had shown a talent for music by going out and performing in the band, and he was a triple major who was probably going to do something great in the scientific field in this country. But Stack didn't get to live that dream because, along with so many others, he was gunned down that day at Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech, Newtown, Aurora, Tucson--these are just the mass shootings. I will keep on going, but these victims just don't end. Stack on top of that 40, 50, 60 people every day being killed on our streets. It is important to talk about these victims. That is why I wanted to come to the floor today to do this, because if we don't do something in the next 2 weeks, these lists are going to grow.

The illegal guns used on the streets of Chicago and Bridgeport and New Haven and Washington, DC, and New York weren't always illegal guns. They were legal guns before they became illegal guns. Somewhere along the line, their status transferred. The question is, What can we do to stop that transfer from happening?

I believe in the second amendment. I believe in the protection that it affords people to own a gun, to be able to hunt or to shoot for sport or to protect themselves. But I want to make sure guns stay in the ``legal'' category and don't leach into the ``illegal'' category. That is why 90 percent of Americans think we should have a law in this Nation that provides for universal, mandatory background checks for everybody who buys a gun. That is a really simple thing to do.

This is just a sampling of the lives that could have been protected. The gun used in Newtown went through a background check, but so many of the guns used to kill boys and girls and young adults and men and women in our cities don't go through background checks. We think about 40 percent of guns sold across this country don't go through background checks.

One of the tragedies in this long line is directly relevant to this bill. At Columbine High School, the gun used was bought outside of the background check system, and the friend of the shooter's who bought the gun said after the incident that the reason she bought it with the method she did was because had she gone to a gun store, it wouldn't have passed the background check. That is the gun show loophole. What has it been--a decade-plus since Columbine, and we still haven't closed the gun show loophole? We still haven't made the collective decision that we should make sure criminals don't buy guns? She said she couldn't have bought the gun if she went to a licensed gun dealer because it would have been prohibited. So a bunch of kids died at Columbine High School.

Someone could make the argument that if the gun hadn't gotten in their hands that way, it might have gotten in their hands another way. I get it. Nothing we are talking about guarantees that another Sandy Hook isn't going to happen, and it certainly can't guarantee that our streets are going to all of a sudden be safer overnight. But if we make it a little bit harder to get that gun, if we make it a little bit more difficult for a criminal to get his hands on a weapon, the chances look a whole lot better to survive on the streets of our cities or in our schools and mosques and movie theaters.

As Senator Blumenthal pointed out, I can absolutely make the case that if we had stronger laws on the books today, Newtown may not have happened, and even if it did happen, some of these kids would be alive today.

What happened in one of those classrooms is instructive. A handful of kids survived because Victoria Soto put them into a closet, and when the shooting was over, they were discovered in that closet.

Another set of kids survived a different way. When Lanza went to switch magazines, there was a delay in the shooting and a bunch of kids ran out of the classroom. Five of them--six were found in the closet, and five of them ran out of the classroom when Lanza decided to switch magazine clips. There are five kids who don't look much different from Ana and Daniel and Dylan and Benjamin who are--and Jesse, there is Jesse--who are alive today because Adam Lanza had to switch clips. He only had to do it about 6 times to get off 154 bullets. We don't exactly understand why, but he didn't actually discharge all of his 30- round clips. Sometimes he only shot about 10 or 15 bullets before he switched, but some of them he went straight through. He only had to switch clips we think about 6 times to get off 154 bullets in 10 minutes.

If we had on the books today a law such as the law we had back in the 1990s and early 2000s that restricted ammunition clips to 10 rounds--an amendment Senator Blumenthal and I will bring to the floor next week, either an amendment or in a separate bill--that shooter would have had to change ammunition clips 15 times--9 more opportunities for kids to run out of the classroom. I know we can't guarantee that things would have been different, but let me tell my colleagues there are an awful lot of parents in Newtown who believe their sons or daughters might likely be alive today had we continued to have a restriction limiting ammunition clips to 10 rounds.

What we know is that in Tucson, people would be alive today because that incident absolutely stopped when the shooter switched clips. It was during the transfer of ammunition magazines that he was tackled. We know that if he had 10 rounds rather than a higher number, there would still be people alive there.

We know what happened in the movie theater in Aurora. That guy walked into the movie theater with a 100-round drum. What on Earth is the reason why somebody needs a 100-round drum? It jammed because these guys are amateurs. They have not done this before. People say: It is not going to make a difference--10 rounds, 30 rounds--because it takes 3 seconds to switch clips, so it is not going to provide any different outcome.

For a professional shooter, it takes 3 seconds. But for a nervous 21- year-old kid, hyped up on adrenaline, it is a different thing. Five kids escaped in Newtown; the shooting stopped in Tucson; the shooting stopped when the gun jammed upon exchange of magazines in Aurora. People are alive today because there is something that happens when you have to exchange magazines in these incidents of mass violence. More exchanges of magazines mean more kids alive today.

Let me talk to you about Porshe Foster. She was 15 years old when she was killed over the Thanksgiving holiday last year in Chicago. She had five sisters--six daughters, and Porshe was the youngest of them. Porshe was 15, and she was shot in the back of the head when she was standing with her best friends in a backyard during a sleepover.

The intended victim was a gang-related individual. They were targeting

somebody else, but she got hit. Twenty-five shots were fired, by the way. Twenty-five shots were fired. Porshe was the only victim that was hit.

She was a sophomore at ACE Tech. It is a charter school that specializes in getting kids ready for college in architecture and construction and engineering. This is exactly the kind of student we wanted, where, on the floor of the Senate and the House of Representatives, we are all the time clamoring for more girls to go into STEM education--into science, technology, engineering, and math. Porshe was doing it. She was living up to our expectations. She was going to a charter school. It was going to get her ready to go into a career in architecture, construction or engineering. Imagine what she could have done if she lived beyond the age of 15.

She played volleyball and she played basketball. She sang in the church choir. She loved art. Her classmates actually honored her death by holding an art sale in her memory. Because funerals are expensive, especially in inner-city Chicago, they used the proceeds from the art sale to pay for Porshe's funeral.

Let me tell you, that is no small expense. We do not think about that, but one of the biggest issues in Hartford, CT, today--a city that has had relatively low gun violence this year but on an average year can have a couple dozen gun deaths--is how do you pay for the funerals, how do you come up with the money as a community to pay for a funeral every other week in a small, little city such as Hartford. Porshe's friends decided to do an art sale to pay for her funeral.

Her family and friends remember her as happy, as friendly, as a great student, always busy, someone ``you couldn't be quiet around.''

Her five sisters had planned to give their youngest sister a guitar for Christmas. She was killed on November 26, 2012, about a month before she was going to get that guitar.

I know there are other people who are here to speak, and so I will yield the floor at this time. But I will be back today and tomorrow to talk about more victims. I just think we need to tell their stories. I just think the people need to know who these people are because there are going to be more of them if things do not change, and we have the power this week and next week to do something about it--not to eliminate future victims. We are never, ever going to change the fact that people are going to pick up a gun, are going to violate the law, are going to shoot to kill. We are never going to stop that. But we can do something to reduce these numbers so next year at this time or 2 years at this time we cannot come down to the floor with a binder full of victims just from the past 3 months.

I will be back later today and tomorrow to continue to do this, but at this time I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise again to continue my attempt on the floor of the Senate today, without holding up the Senate or allowing others to speak their mind, to really draw attention to the names, faces, and reality behind this chart. This is probably difficult to see for some of my colleagues because it represents the over 3,300 people who have died since December 14, since the Newtown tragedy. Over 3,300 people have died from gun violence since December 14 and are represented by all of these individual figurines, which are so many that the picture becomes muddled. It almost looks like lines going back and forth. Behind each one of those small, tiny figurines is a story of a man, woman, little boy, or little girl who had their life stolen from them and from their family prematurely because of gun violence.

I wish there weren't enough material to fill today, tomorrow, and next week, when others aren't on the floor speaking. I wish there weren't 3,300 stories in the last several months alone with respect to people who have died from gun violence, but that is the reality.

The reality is that this Nation has become callous over time to the everyday incidents of gun violence that have happened on our streets, in my cities of Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven, and also in your cities of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Baltimore.

We have come to believe, over the course of the last 20 years since we passed the last major gun violence initiative, through the Congress, that we can't do anything, that we are powerless. We have come to delude ourselves of that fact.

I gave my first speech on the floor of the Senate this morning, and I have been moved to come back and spend time today talking about the victims as a means to try to move us to do something. We know what we need to do because people out there have already decided what it is. Ninety percent of Americans support the universal background checks. Two-thirds of Americans support a ban on these high-capacity magazine clips. We haven't figured it out for ourselves.

I wish to speak for a few minutes about these victims. I will start these remarks with a school near Littleton, CO. Columbine High School, on the morning of April 20, 1999, was visited by two very disturbed young men who walked into the school. Their names were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and they opened fire in the school. They killed and injured 12 more. It was at the time certainly one of the worst instances of mass shooting in a school this country had ever seen. Of course, it has now been eclipsed by what happened at Virginia Tech and what happened in my State last December 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School. At the time, it shocked the Nation because we didn't know how to comprehend 10 students going about their day at Columbine High School being gunned down by 2 of their fellow students. Now we are grappling with how to comprehend the deaths of 20 kids, 6- and 7-year- olds at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Although it has now been almost 14 years since the incident on April 20--we are about to come up on the anniversary--we shouldn't forget the people who were killed. Before the next Senator comes down wishing to speak, I will speak about those kids who were killed in Columbine.

Cassie Bernall was a really sweet, kind little girl. She was active in her church. Her work in her church meant so much to her that after she died her parents set up the Cassie Bernall Foundation, which provides support to youth ministries. I was a part of my youth group in my church growing up, and I know what a wonderful connection it is, both to God and to your fellow adolescents. It was a big deal for her. She also was fascinated with the United Kingdom, and she had a dream to attend Cambridge University. She wanted to become an obstetrician.

Today Cassie would be about 30 years old. She would most likely have completed her training and would be in a residency or be a practicing OB/GYN. We spend a lot of time talking about the fact that we need more preventive care doctors practicing medicine. Cassie was gunned down that day. She didn't get to live her dream or contribute to a field we know is very important.

That wasn't the only thing Cassie cared about. She loved the outdoors and spent a lot of time in Breckenridge. She had a passion for rock climbing, snowboarding, backpacking, camping, and taking photographs of everything she did so she could record her love of the outdoors.

She was buried along with a poem her mother wrote:

Bunny Rabbit, my friend, my daughter, my mentor, I will

love you and miss you forever. I promise to take good care of

your kitty. I know that Jesus is elated to have you in His

presence.

Cassie would have been an amazing person and was an amazing person. She was 17 years old. She hadn't yet told us exactly who she was going to be, but she was going to do great things. She was killed that day at Columbine High School.

Steven Robert Curnow was the youngest victim at Columbine. He was only 14 years old when he died. He loved his family. All of these kids loved their families, but he was especially close with his family. He was pretty close to his true passion as well--``Star Wars.'' He was 14 years old, and his parents said he watched the ``Star Wars'' movies so much he could speak every single line of the movies in sync with the actors. He was also a great athlete. He played soccer, trained very hard, and even worked locally at 14 years old as a part-time referee. He wanted to go into the Navy. He was a pretty well-rounded kid who loved ``Star Wars,'' was a great athlete, and wanted to go into the military and become a Navy pilot. He was great with young kids too. This is what his friends remember, how compassionate he was with young kids. He was 14 years old.

We already had this window into who this kid was going to be. He loved having fun and watching ``Star Wars.'' He was great with kids as a volunteer referee. He wanted to be a Navy pilot and serve our country. He never was able to do these things because he was gunned down in Columbine High School.

Corey DePooter is remembered as a really courageous kid. He was 17 years old, and he had a very strong sense of right and wrong, maybe stronger than he needed to have. When he was growing up and played cops and robbers, he refused to be the robber. He needed always to be law enforcement in that equation. He wanted to be a marine, as Steven did. Steven wanted to be a Navy pilot; Corey wanted to be a marine. After he died, he was named an honorary marine in a ceremony in front of his grave.

His friend Austin said: People said Corey was just the kind of guy you want to be around. He would always pick up our spirits in a gloomy situation.

He was on the wrestling team. He loved playing golf. He was going to serve our country. He was 17 years old, and Corey never was allowed to live out that dream.

Kelly Ann Fleming was a year younger when she died in Columbine. She was 16 years old. She was an aspiring author. At 16 years old, she had written a great deal of poetry, prose, and a lot of stories about her own life. She actually started writing her autobiography. What an amazing thing for a 16-year-old. She was writing an autobiography covering her life from age 5 until the point she died. The library was what Kelly loved. Her mom said it was her one true safe place. She felt right in that library surrounded by learning and books. Ironically, in school her favorite subject was math. Her favorite math teacher served as a pallbearer at her funeral.

Like most teenagers, she was very much looking forward to obtaining her driver's license. She wanted to get out there in a Mustang or Corvette and drive around with her friends. She was very bright and very good at math. We need more mathematicians, scientists, and engineers in this country.

Kelly Ann, who was 16 then, would be about 30 today. She was not allowed to fulfill those dreams.

This is what happened at Columbine. The two students who walked into the school and started shooting couldn't get the weapons themselves. They had a friend buy them for them. The friend knew that if they went to a gun dealership, they wouldn't get them because they wouldn't be able to pass the background check. They went outside the background check to get them a different way--a way thousands of people go to buy their weapons. The vast majority of them do this not because they are trying to get around the background check system but because in private sales, gun shows, and on the Internet, we largely don't require background checks. This is one of the things we are attempting to fix this week.

There is a belief among many of the family members of the Columbine victims that had background checks been universal, possibly the two shooters in the school might not have had those weapons. We can't guarantee that. I don't want to stand here and say that we know for certain that if we had universal background checks, Kelly Ann, Corey, Steven, Cassie, and all the rest would still be alive today. We don't know that, but chances are a little better. Those families want to have had the chance that their sons and daughters might be alive today, might have kids of their own today, might be an OB/GYN, a Navy pilot, a marine, or mathematician. They would take those chances.

So when we think about these victims, we need to think about the real

policy consequences of what we are debating, and while nothing we are talking about is going to guarantee these students who died would be alive today, boy, it gives it a much better chance it would have happened. That is just a sampling of the victims in one high school, in Columbine High School.

What we know is the names reflected by these little figurines are largely not victims of mass shootings. These are just the victims since December 14. These are folks who just got killed by a stray bullet or as a result of a crime of passion or, as I explained in an earlier speech today, just because they were taking out the trash from McDonald's or going to check out some commotion in their housing complex or driving home after dropping off kids at school. They were doing what they normally do every day. And because somebody else had a gun, legally or illegally, they got killed.

So let's talk about some of those victims as well. As I said, I am going to be down here as much as I can today, tomorrow, and next week telling these stories as a means to hopefully inspire us to some bipartisan action on the floor. I hope some good things are happening today while I am down on the Senate floor. I hope we are coming together on this issue. But if these stories don't move people, I am not sure what does.

On January 7 of last year, 2012, a 14-year-old boy in Bridgeport, CT, by the name of Justin Thompson, and his friends from Barnum Middle School went to a Sweet 16 party for a neighborhood girl on the east end of Bridgeport. Justin was a popular eighth grader. His friends and his family thought he looked exactly like Alex Rodriguez. Down in Bridgeport that is a good thing; up in the rest of Connecticut, maybe not so much.

The parents of the girl had rented a hall and hired a DJ. There was no alcohol, there was no fighting. It was just a regular Sweet 16 party. Eventually, as more kids showed up, it kind of started to get a little too big and the police had to come and break it up. But Justin left the party and began walking down a street nearby with two other young people when all of a sudden two men appeared and started shooting. Justin was hit in the head and he was killed in the commotion.

He was 14 years old. He was walking home from a Sweet 16 party. He didn't do anything wrong. He wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was in the right place at the right time. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing that night--walking home from a Sweet 16 party--and he got killed by guns. That is Justin Thompson.

Keijahnae Robinson was 15 years old when, on July 21, 2012, she was shot. She told her friends she wanted to be the next Mariah Carey. She was a big singer. She loved to sing and she loved to perform. Guess where she went on July 20 in Bridgeport, CT. She went to a Sweet 16 party as well. Her 16th birthday was actually the following week, and she was telling friends that she couldn't wait for her party. She was enjoying her friend's party but she couldn't wait for her Sweet 16 party, which was happening the following week.

After the party, her friend's mom invited some of the girls to sort of take the party to her house. It was a warm, beautiful night, and the girls were sitting out on the porch when two men came by and opened fire on the porch before driving away in a car. Two hours before she was shot, there was a robbery just down the street, and somehow this was connected to it.

She was 15 years old. She was sitting on the porch with her friends, basking in the afterglow of a wonderful Sweet 16 party, getting ready for her 16th birthday and she was gunned down by a drive-by shooting. That is Keijahnae Robinson.

Blair Belcher was 17.

This is all Bridgeport, CT. I am just giving one city in 2011 and 2012.

Blair was dreaming of one day going to college. He wanted to go into electronics and computing. He was walking through an east side park in Bridgeport on July 31--he was about to enter his senior year at Harding High School--when three shooters gunned him down in the middle of that park--a life cut short.

He was a real talent. Blair had a penchant for fixing things. He could fix anything. His mom said it was like a gift, and he wanted to do something with it when he graduated. He was 1 year away from graduating. He was 17 years old and killed in Bridgeport, CT. He was just in a park and he got gunned down in a cross fire.

It is hard to even figure out why these things happen, but they just get built into the background noise of urban gun violence.

``TJ'' Mathis was good at a lot of things in Bridgeport. Excuse me, TJ, I am sorry. TJ was from New Haven. I got to know TJ's father Lenny well. And Lenny will tell you that TJ was good at a lot of things, but basketball was at the top of the list. He was the star of Hamden High School's team. He led them to three division titles. He was all-State and he went on to play Division I basketball at Morgan State University and had just been signed to a minor league basketball contract with the ABA. He was a star. He was good at a lot of things--this was a multitalented kid--but basketball was his thing. He did well and led his team. He was going on to a career in basketball.

On a warm Saturday night in September 2011, he and his friends went to a party honoring another basketball legend--someone we are really proud of in Connecticut, Ryan Gomes of Waterbury. Ryan went to Providence College, went to the NBA and had a great career. After leaving the party, his friends realized they were too tired to drive. They were responsible. This kid had a career ahead of him. He was going to be a basketball star. He was going to the ABA, and a lot of people who go to the ABA get to the NBA.

So TJ decided he needed to get some sleep. Unfortunately, TJ never made it home that night. He pulled over to get a little sleep on the side of the road and a young man, seeing the three boys asleep on the side of the road, pulled up next to them and tried to rob them. When TJ woke up and realized he was being robbed in his car, he resisted, and the young man shot and killed him.

On the verge of a career in the ABA, a basketball standout in Hamden, CT, and at Morgan State University, just sleeping in his car trying to get a few winks before he drove home, being responsible so he didn't do something silly like get in a car while he was tired and run off the road and hurt somebody else, he gets robbed and shot.

Just part of the background noise of the people who die every day in this country--30, 40, 50, 60 a day. I will come down here today and tomorrow and next week, and I won't get through a few days' worth of shootings all across this country. The truth is a lot of these shootings in cities are happening with illegal guns.

The opponents of gun legislation are right in one respect. They are right that the majority of crimes are not committed by assault weapons. Assault weapons have become the weapon of choice for mass shooters. That is true. But the reality is these kids I am talking about--Justin and Keijahnae and Blair and TJ--were killed by hand guns, most of them illegal hand guns. Why do we have so many illegal hand guns out there? Because we haven't done anything about it here. We allow 40 percent of guns to be sold in this country without background checks.

Hopefully, we are getting closer to changing that, but we don't have a Federal law making gun trafficking illegal. People don't understand that someone can take a whole bunch of guns out of a store legally, then sell them on the street to people who are legally prohibited from purchasing guns, and they have not committed a Federal gun trafficking violation. Maybe they have committed a State violation, but they haven't committed a Federal violation.

We can't solve this problem entirely. We are not going to stop bad people from taking guns out on the street and doing bad things, but we can substantially decrease the likelihood that another Columbine or Sandy Hook happens, that another TJ Mathis, a standup young kid, a basketball star, gets gunned down just because he is in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place at the right time with the wrong person with the wrong gun. We can do something about it here.

Throughout the day I have been trying to talk about the variety of victims, people on the streets of our cities but also in our schools. So before I yield the floor again, I want to go back

to the reason we are here. I think it is important to tell you who the victims are, but I think it is particularly important to tell you who the victims in Newtown, CT, were because while Newtown should not have been a tipping point, and it should not have taken this long for us to have this conversation, I think we all recognize we are having this conversation because of the 20 6- and 7-year-olds and the 6 adults who were killed that day. And I believe if we don't do something about it there will be another Newtown; that we will have another town added to the list of Aurora and Littleton and Tucson and Newtown in a matter of weeks or months--hopefully longer--if we don't take some action.

So let me go back, before I yield the floor again today, to talk some more about the wonderful children and adults who were killed in Newtown.

Mary Sherlach's husband is here today in DC lobbying on behalf of his wife, who was 1 year away from retirement as Sandy Hook's school psychologist when she was murdered that day in Sandy Hook Elementary School. He is here to talk about the insanity of not taking these high- capacity magazines off the streets. That is his passion. He believes there is a chance there would be boys and girls alive today in Newtown had Adam Lanza had 10 bullets per magazine instead of 30 bullets per magazine.

But let me tell you about Mary because Mary is pretty amazing. Mary had worked for years at Sandy Hook Elementary. She had actually been there for 18 years. She was not just the school psychologist, she was involved in basically every school improvement effort you can imagine. She was a member of the District Conflict Resolution Committee, the Safe School Climate Committee, ironically, the Crisis Intervention Team, and the Student Instructional Team. She cared so deeply about the school, it wasn't just a 9-to-5 or 9-to-3 or 7-to-3 job for her. She put in all sorts of extra hours to make the school better. She was 1 year away from retirement, and, oh, how she and Bill were looking forward to retirement. They had a little cabin on the Finger Lakes-- still have a cabin in upstate New York--and they loved going up there. They had planned on spending a good part of their retirement up there when they weren't spending time with their daughters Katie and Maura.

Mary loved gardening, reading, and she loved the theater. She was a great neighbor. She was a very beautiful person, who, on that day, did something a lot of us hope we would do, though we can't really be sure. About 9:30 that morning, Adam Lanza blasted his way through the locked doors of Sandy Hook Elementary School. The principal of the school, Dawn Hochsprung, and Mary were meeting, I believe, when they heard the bullets and the glass crash. They must have known something horrible had happened. There are two instincts at that point--maybe three--you freeze, you run the other way, or you do what Dawn and Mary did. You run to the bullets. That is what she did. Her school was in trouble, something awful was happening, and Mary and her principal ran to the gunfire and the gunman. They didn't run away.

Now, plenty of people in that school did heroic and courageous things that day--they stowed kids in closets and classrooms, they hugged kids as the bullets rained down, but Mary and Dawn were the first people who died because they ran right to the bullets.

Mary is a hero not just because of the 18 years she spent dedicated to those kids, not just because of all the efforts she put in to make that school a better place, but because that day she did everything in her power to make that shooting end. She wasn't successful, but she tried, and we all hope we have a little bit of Mary Sherlach in us as well.

Mary is different than those kids. Those kids had their whole life ahead of them. We don't know what they would have done. So at least we have the benefit of knowing who Mary Sherlach was. At least we have the benefit of knowing the wonder that was her life. But she deserved retirement, and Bill deserved to have his wife, who had worked so hard and had spent all these nights trying to make her school a better place--he deserved to have her for their retirement up in the Finger Lakes, and he doesn't.

Ben Wheeler, whom I talked about earlier today, was a very gifted musician. Ben was 6 years old when he died that morning. Just before December 14, he had performed his first recital at 6 years old. I have a 4-year-old at home, and I know what an amazing thing it is to have a child be that dedicated to music that by 6 years old they can perform a recital. He loved trains. They would go to New York City a lot, and he was always more interested in riding the subway and the train than he was in visiting the museums or the zoos. That is not uncommon for kids. Maybe doing a recital at age 6 is but loving trains is not.

More than music, more than trains, more than subways, though, Ben loved his 9-year-old brother Nate. The two of them did everything together. They played soccer, they swam. As I said this morning in my first speech before this Chamber, on the way to school that morning Ben told his mom he wanted to be an architect when he grew up, but he was going to be a paleontologist because that was what his brother Nate was going to be, and he wanted to do everything Nate did.

Ben was going to be a pretty amazing man, that kind of musical talent at an early age, a love for his family, and, unfortunately, Ben Wheeler lost his life that day.

Emilie Parker was 6 years old. The one thing you will hear about with respect to Emilie when you talk to the Parker family is that she had an infectious laugh. You know those laughs you hear once and hope you get to hear it again before you leave that person's presence? That was Emilie. Her father Robbie described her as bright, creative, and loving. She always wanted to try new things, so much so that at 6 years old she was actually learning Portuguese. Her father was trying to teach her that and it was part of their bond.

She was an artist. She loved to draw with markers and she was talented. At 2 years old, she could write her own name and she could draw stick figures of her family. She loved art so much that her parents Robbie and Alissa have decided to spend a part of their period of mourning and time after that to set up a fund that honors her creativity. As I said earlier today, what is amazing is that so many of these families have dedicated big portions of their time in the horrible 4 months since trying to figure out ways to bring out some of the goodness and light from these kids' lives to the rest of the community. So Robbie and Alissa have set up a fund that is going to support art programs in schools, so art programs have a little more resources so other kids similar to their daughter can experience the joys of drawing and painting. She was learning Portuguese. This is somebody with a very inquisitive, thoughtful mind, and we never are going to get to know who Emilie Parker was going to grow up to be.

Jack Pinto was 6 years old, and he was already a jock. He loved the New York Giants, and he had an idol whose name is Victor Cruz. He loved Victor Cruz. He followed everything Victor Cruz did. He was ecstatic when the Giants won the Super Bowl and Cruz played a big part. Victor was wonderful enough in the days following the tragedy to honor Jack's memory. During the game after the tragedy, he wore writing on his cleats and his gloves that said: Jack Pinto, my hero. Jack was buried in a Victor Cruz jersey.

He was also a wrestler. I didn't even know that you wrestled at 6 years old, but Jack did, and he was pretty good at it. To show how tough Jack was, in one of his practices, he lost a tooth. When a 6- year-old loses a tooth, you would think that would start the tears flowing. But Jack didn't cry when he lost that tooth. He just took the tooth, handed it to his coach, and went back wrestling with a gapped- tooth smile on his face. That was Jack. He was tough. He was an athlete. He had perseverance. Imagine who Jack Pinto was going to be when he grew up. We are not going to know because of what happened that day.

I get it. I know there is a risk of overselling policy change. I don't want to make it sound like I am coming down to the floor and telling you these stories because these kids are going to come back to life if we pass some bill or that we are going to guarantee this doesn't happen again. I don't want to oversell what we are going to do.

But the 3,300 people who have died since Newtown should tell us that enough is enough and that we should try something. Even if we are not absolutely, 100 percent, ironclad guaranteed that what we are going to do is going to work, we should try something. Because it is not OK that somebody can walk into a school with a military-style assault weapon and shoot bullets at the rate of six per second. It is not OK that a couple students can do an end-around on the background check system to buy guns so they can walk into their high school and kill 10 people and wound as many more. It is not all right that there are thousands of illegal guns on our streets that are used to kill 16- and 17-year-olds on their way home from Sweet 16 parties. There are no guarantees that what we are going to do this week and next week is going to solve everything, but we have to try something.

So I am going to continue to come down to the floor over the course of the next few days to talk about these victims--the victims from Newtown, from Columbine. Hopefully, later today I will be able to talk about some of the victims from Virginia Tech and Wisconsin. Of course, there are just binders full of stories that we could put on this floor regarding urban gun violence that plagues our cities every day. These stories are important because too often we trade in this body in statistics, that we just talk in terms of politics. Underlying this debate are 20 little kids in Newtown whose lives were cut short but also thousands upon thousands of other kids, young adults, and adults whose stories deserve to be told.

At this point, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I gave my first speech on the floor of the Senate this morning. This week and next week, we will be debating one of the most fundamental issues that come to a body such as this: What can we do to better protect our kids and our loved ones from unexpected death? I care about this issue not just because it is one that is important to the families of victims in New Haven, Bridgeport, Hartford, and others who have been the victims of routine gun violence in Connecticut but, of course, because of what happened in Sandy Hook.

I spoke this morning more broadly about the awful experience of being in Connecticut, the personal experience of having been at the firehouse that day, the wonderful experience of having gotten to know the families of the Sandy Hook victims since then, and to have witnessed the millions of acts of kindness that have showered down upon Newtown in the days and weeks and months since. That tragedy has become the tipping point that has brought us here to talk about a solution to at least some of the epidemic gun violence that for too long has plagued the streets of our cities but now comes to us in waves of mass shootings happening in our schools and in our movie theaters and in our places of worship.

My hope, as a brandnew Member of the Senate, as someone who has lived through this experience as one of the representatives of Sandy Hook, is to just try to tell my colleagues whom we are talking about here. I think we get caught up in the numbers and the policy debates and we forget these are real kids, these are real people.

This is just a small sample of the victims in Newtown and the victims from across Connecticut, in Bridgeport and in New Haven, who have been gunned down prematurely. There are just too many of them. Over 3,300 people have died from guns since those 20 kids and six adults were killed in Newtown. We are not powerless. We can do something about it.

I have said over and over as I have been here on the floor today that there are no guarantees. We are not going to pass a law that is going to immediately flip a switch and assure that gun violence would not continue to be a problem, but it can be less of a problem. It can be less of a reality for kids who are walking to school fearing for their lives in urban America. It can be less of a reality for parents sending their children to elementary school, never thinking that something like what happened at Sandy Hook could occur. We can do something about it.

So I wanted to come back again to continue talking about the victims, to give them a face. I am very encouraged, as I think all of us are, to see some movement between both parties coming together on one element of this debate: background checks. Hopefully, this will be looked upon as a very good week in the midst of this debate. So I want to tell my colleagues whom we are talking about.

Let me go back to Newtown. I think this is my fourth time on the Senate floor today, and I still haven't told my colleagues about everybody who perished in that school.

The youngest victim that day was barely 6 years old. His name was Noah Pozner. He was the youngest victim and he was the first to be buried. His was the first funeral I went to amongst countless funerals I lost count of. He was young, but he was described by his uncle as ``smart as a whip.'' He had a real rambunctious streak. He could be a handful for his family and for his twin sister Arielle who was also in that school on Friday morning. She was luckily in a different class. Arielle survived; her brother did not.

He was already a very good reader. He was one of the youngest kids in his first grade class, but he was a very good reader and he was looking forward to a book he had just bought at a book fair. I will butcher the pronunciation, but it was a Ninjago book he bought at a fair he was excited about.

He was going to a birthday party on the following day, Saturday, that he was just bubbling about in the hours before he went to school. As is true for so many of the victims, his family describes him as having a huge heart. The Pozners are an amazing family who have spoken out. His mother and his uncle have been so articulate since the shooting, calling on the Nation to change. They have been in Washington visiting my office, and I know they have visited with other Members of the Senate--just another one of these families who have somehow found the courage and the strength amidst this awful grieving to come here and explain why things need to change, how they will not feel any justice until we do something here.

Caroline Previdi loved to draw and to dance. She was 6 years old as well. She had one of these big smiles that everybody loved. It brought happiness to everybody who saw that smile. She and her family were active members of the St. Rose Church. I can't tell my colleagues enough about St. Rose Church. About 10 of the victims were parishioners there. This hit that church harder than any institution save for the school. The monsignor there has been an absolute hero to the community, having buried almost a dozen of his kids. He has come down to Washington to try to lobby for some sense of change, and he has brought that community together.

At that funeral he presided over, everybody wore pink. It was Caroline's favorite color. My colleagues have heard me say that about a number of little girls who died, a lot of whom were big fans of the color pink. Her mom will always remember Caroline as the shadow of her older brother. Sometimes to his dismay, she followed him around everywhere and she adored him. Her brother Walker and she were big New York Yankees fans. Even though she was only 6 years old, when her family recently went to Boston for a family trip, she refused to walk into Fenway Park because she was a devoted Yankees fan.

Caroline had a wonderful spirit and we will never know exactly what she would grow up to be. She died that day.

Jessica Rekos was 6 years old and, as do so many little 6-year-old girls, she loved everything about animals. Again, another trend. This was a couple of first grade classes full of animal lovers, and even some of their teachers were big animal lovers as well.

Jessica loved horses. So anything having to do with a horse, she wanted it. She watched movies about horses, she read books about horses, she drew pictures about horses, and she wrote stories about horses. She was murdered just 11 days before Christmas. She was hoping that Santa would bring her a cowgirl hat and cowgirl boots, and her family even promised her that maybe, if she was really good, in a couple years she could get her own horse.

She loved going to Cape Cod and she especially loved seeing the whales. She had a fondness for aquatic life as well, a big fan of the movie ``Free Willie,'' and she loved going to the cape to see if she could catch a glimpse of those whales.

She was curious. That curiosity was going to spring forth into a wonderful young woman who was going to take her loves and her curiosity and her passion for life and make it into something great. We will never get to know exactly what that would be. Jessica died at age 6.

Ana Marquez-Greene, I talked about Ana this morning in my first speech. Her mother Nelba, who is just amazing--Nelba is a social worker who has a passion for helping people. She is in DC right now as we speak trying to push us to change things. Her little daughter Ana grew up in a musical family. Ana's father Jimmy is a very well known saxophone player, a Hartford native. The family came back to Connecticut to raise their kids. So Ana was musical. She used to love to sing and dance. She loved most of all doing that at church. She was so connected to her church. She loved reading the Bible. She loved having the Bible read to her. She loved being part of the dance and singing experience at her church. Her parents said she didn't walk anywhere. That was not her method of transportation. Her mode of transport was to dance from place to place.

She is survived by her older brother Isaiah who is a third grader at Sandy Hook Elementary and who survived that day. My colleagues can find Ana's performances on YouTube. Ana's performances have been viewed tens of hundreds of thousands of times online.

She was a talent. She had talent in her blood. Who knows whether she was going to choose music and dance as a career, but those creative muscles she had and the amazing parents who were raising her were going to assure that she was going to be something special. She died that day, horribly, but her family--her mother Nelba especially--is just determined to make sure we honor her memory by doing something here.

Five kids escaped Sandy Hook Elementary School that day out of those classrooms. Eleven kids--around that number--survived. Six of them hid in a closet, but five of them escaped because the shooter had to reload. When he reloaded, he perhaps fumbled the exchange, and five kids ran out of a classroom and were discovered nearby some moments later. Five children--unfortunately, none of those pictured in this poster--are alive today because as does happen in so many of these mass shootings, an opportunity presented itself when the shooter changed magazines.

I wish we didn't have to get into the detailed nuances of how these mass shootings play out to try to find a way out of mass violence, but we do because they are happening over and over. So we now have some experience. We now, to our great horror, have some data.

Empirically we know what happens. And what happened in Sandy Hook that killed Ana and Jessica and Noah and Caroline and so many others is that he had trouble reloading, five kids escaped, and either at the end of the 10 minutes because he had trouble reloading, or maybe just because the police were coming in, he decided enough was enough and shot himself. In Tucson, when the shooter reloaded, it was enough time for somebody to jump on him and end that incident. In Aurora, again, when the shooter had difficulty reloading--the gun jammed--the shooting ended.

So 154 bullets in 10 minutes at Sandy Hook Elementary School killed 26 people. The shooter had to reload about six times. What would have happened if he had to reload 15 times? How many more kids would have escaped? How many more opportunities would we have had for the shooting to go wrong? Would there have been a moment where somebody could have jumped on him and stopped him, as they did in Tucson? I don't know the answer to these questions. Nobody knows the answer to these questions. But they are important ones to ask because they are relevant to the conversation we are having. If the answer is that there is a pretty good chance one of those three things would have happened--the gun would have jammed, kids would have escaped, or somebody could have stopped the shooting--then we should think twice before dismissing the idea that a limitation on the size of magazines sold in this Nation wouldn't have an effect on future mass shootings.

Our first job should be to stop that shooting from happening in the first place. But given the fact we are living in this terrible, awful reality in which they are happening on a regular basis, then we have to be talking about what we can do to limit the damage and the carnage when they do occur.

I will tell my colleagues while no one is sure of the difference in outcome at Sandy Hook had the assault weapons ban still been in effect, there are plenty of parents there who do believe there is a pretty good chance some of their kids might still be alive had that bill still been in effect. Remember, these were guns and clips purchased legally. For all the arguments that all the laws on the books aren't going to stop criminals, I am not sure Nancy Lanza was going to go onto the black market to purchase an AR-15 or ammunition that was illegal. Things could have been different.

But as we know, every day there are more people killed in this country by guns than were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary that day. I will tell my colleagues that I have heard some very visceral anger from parents and gun victims in the cities I represent because they rightfully wonder why we are talking about this issue now--after Sandy Hook--when, for the last 20 years, young men and women have been getting gunned down in our cities and it didn't seem as though this place stood up and cared too much about it. They welcome the conversation, but they wonder where all of this compassion was when people such as Ronnie Chambers were being killed.

Ronnie Chambers was 33 years old when he was shot in January 2012. He grew up with his mom and his siblings in Chicago's notorious Cabrini- Green housing projects and he became involved in the gang problem at a young age. But he had to watch something that no one should ever have to watch.

You think it is terrible that Noah Pozner's twin sister has to grow up with the knowledge that her brother was gunned down. Think about what Ronnie Chambers had to grow up with, having watched his other three siblings die at the hands of gun violence.

Ronnie became convinced, after watching his three other siblings die from gun violence, that he had to turn his life around. So he did. He went into the music industry and he became a music producer and he decided to go even further and to start to mentor young performers.

People remember him in the industry as ``everybody's hero.'' He was always ``pointing kids in the right direction'' despite his own difficult upbringing.

He was fun too. He loved banana milkshakes and onion rings. Then he was killed--the fourth of four siblings to be gunned down in and around Chicago. Four brothers and sisters: His brother Carlos shot in 1995; his brother Jerome shot in 2000; his sister LaToya shot just 3 months after Jerome; and then Ronnie, dead at 33.

How about Amber Deanna Stanley, who was killed last summer in Kettering, MD. She was spending a nice, quiet evening at home when a gunman literally kicked down her door and opened fire. She was shot multiple times while she was in her bed. She was 17 years old--17. She just started her senior year at Flowers High School in Springdale, MD. She was enrolled in a very elite science and technology program.

It is crazy, but this is probably the third or fourth or fifth young woman I have talked about here today--and I am probably into 30 or 40 people I have talked about--another young woman who was pursuing a career in engineering and science. She had big dreams. She was an honors student. She was in AP classes, and she wanted to go to Harvard University and maybe become a doctor. She had the grades to do it. She could have gone anywhere she wanted.

She was also very popular. She was a kid whom people were drawn to. She was a peer leader and she would do wonderful, magnanimous things for her classmates, such as she would bring cupcakes to them somewhat spontaneously.

One classmate said three words: ``She was amazing''--until August 23 of last year, a gunman kicked down her door, opened fire, and Amber was gone.

How about Angela Player, 37 years old, shot on February 21 of this year, an avid reader who also loved the outdoors, gardening, and kayaking. She was a fan of everything fun and exciting--fast cars. She liked training dogs. She was killed by her ex-husband.

A lot of these are random killings, but a lot of these killings are by somebody you know. Her ex-husband actually did not have a history of domestic violence but had a gun ready and available in a fit of rage, and she left behind a son and a daughter.

Mr. President, 3,300 people have died since Newtown, and I think it is important, as we have this debate, to come down and talk about who these victims are. I will be doing this over the course of today and tomorrow and this week to try to bring a little bit of color to the discussion we are having.

At this time, I yield back the floor.

Mr. Speaker, on Friday morning, I brought my 4-year-old to school. I dropped him off at 8:45, just like millions of other parents did all across this country, and a few hours later I saw him again. He had a big smile on his face.

In Newtown, Connecticut, on Friday, 20 parents dropped their first graders off at Sandy Hook Elementary or kissed them good-bye as they got on the school bus, and that was the last time they saw their kids.

Something horrible, something unexplainable happened at Sandy Hook Elementary last week. When people ask me how are folks doing, I tell them right now there's a lot of blank looks, these people are just trying to process what happened. Twenty gleaming, beautiful children were gunned down, along with six adults who loved them dearly, by a young man with a sickness that masqueraded as evil that day.

So we are left asking all these questions: Why? Why us? Why these little kids? Why did he do it? Why weren't we able to prevent this from happening? The whys are almost infinite.

In the coming days and weeks, I guess we'll get some answers to these questions, but most of them won't have answers. But when you peek through this vast crippling darkness of the last 4 days, there's one answer that we know for certain. If we ever wondered what kind of community Newtown was, if we ever doubted the deepness of our love for one another, those questions have been answered, and they've been answered definitively.

They were answered by Principal Dawn Hochsprung, who told her colleagues to run one way so that she could run the other way, directly toward the gunman. They were answered by Victoria Soto, who hid her kids in a closet and died shielding her students from the assassin's bullets. And they've been answered by the thousands of individual acts of humanity that have overflowed from the people of Newtown in the days since the shooting, a community just pouring out love trying to help console this incalculable grief.

I went to the first of too many funerals this morning, and the last thing we know is this: All those wonderful little faces that you see on TV and in the newspaper, like Noah Pozner, who was laid to rest this morning, they're a reminder that despite the terrible and awful things that happened, that inside the hearts of all of this is this unbelievable goodness. That's all Noah Pozner had was goodness, was just this purity of spirit.

Newtown is going to survive this because it's a close town. They hurt more because they're close, but they also can survive because they're close. And they can also survive because they will get this inspiration from these 20 little kids who are asking this town to remember how good they were and try to equal that.

As Newtown wrestles with this grief and recovery, the thoughts and the prayers from others matter. I want to thank everyone here for all of the individual love that you've showered down upon our little town. I want to thank the Connecticut delegation here with me today for all of their support. It helps in some small way to know that the world is grieving with us.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the House now rise and observe a moment of silence for the 20 beautiful children and six courageous adults who perished on a crisp, cold Friday morning in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I thank the chairman very much for his kind words and for his generosity in allowing us to have this time on the floor this evening to both remember the 26 individuals who were brutally murdered on Friday morning in the village of Sandy Hook in the town of Newtown, Connecticut, but also to start to paint a pathway forward. Right now, Newtown, Connecticut, is grieving deeply. It's going to be grieving for a long time because, frankly, we are just in the process of figuring out what to think about this, never mind understanding how to recover. This morning, at the first of what will be far too many funerals, you could start to see through the darkness a glimmer of how we figure a way out of this.

Little Noah Pozner was buried this morning by his parents and by his family. Noah was an amazing little 6-year-old. Not unlike most other precocious 6-year-olds, he loved role-playing; he was mischievous; he was as smart as a whip. He always talked about what he wanted to do in life, what he wanted to be. One day, he'd say he wanted to be a doctor. On another day, he'd say he wanted to be a police officer. On most days, his mom said he wanted to be a taco store owner. He loved tacos. That was his dream in life.

What we've seen on TV and in newspapers are these faces, the beautiful, gleaming, pure faces of these 20 first graders who perished; and while all of our hearts are just sick with grief, we know that their purity and their love is going to be the inspiration for the little community of Newtown and, frankly, for this whole country and this whole world to figure out how to recover.

I've been there on the ground since Friday afternoon almost nonstop, and Newtown is asking itself lots of questions about why it happened to us. What could we have done? Why did this guy do it? As I just said on the House floor, those questions are going to stick around for a while; but what you see in Newtown today is just this over-abundant love. I mean, within hours, the fire station was filled with counselors, filled with public safety personnel, filled with food, filled with everything that could possibly support these families. Those offers of help and those offers of support have just kept on coming and kept on coming.

What has also emerged are the stories of what happened that day. Certainly, the tragedy and the horror is first and foremost; but underneath that is heroism, only the beginnings of which we know right now. This is a great school, first of all. This was the best school in Newtown, one of the best in the entire State, and it's because of a principal named Dawn Hochsprung.

Dawn was a great principal right to the end. She was in a meeting when it happened. She told the people in the meeting to run the other way so that she could run directly to the shooter to try to disarm him. A young teacher, Victoria Soto, had the soundness of

mind to tell her kids to hide in the closet. She told the shooter that the students were in the gymnasium, somewhere else in the building.

She didn't survive, but many of her students did because of what she did.

When you start to hear more snippets of teachers who got their colleagues out the window, of kindergarten teachers who huddled their kids, kept them quiet, hummed to them, read them quiet stories so they wouldn't be overheard, you start to know what kind of community Newtown is, and you start to understand how Newtown survives.

I feel like I've done a lot of talking the last 4 days, both publicly and to families and to community members, and so I want to make sure that this is an hour where those who have been grieving all across the country can come and share their thoughts as well.

We've offered a resolution tonight which expresses both our outrage at what happened that day, but also our great sympathy. It does help to know that people from all around the country, from every congressional district and from every country around the world are grieving with us. Only bits and pieces of that seeps through that wall of misery that surrounds Newtown now; but when it does pierce that veil, it helps.

We're going to have a lot of time over the next few days and weeks to talk about what we do next, and I'm sure we'll have some of that discussion tonight. I'll join that conversation when it's right, and I don't begrudge anybody that has it today. It's important to talk about how we move forward and how we make sure this never ever happens again. For those of us in Newtown, we remember those 20 kids and those six adults--Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Rachel D'Avino, Olivia Rose Engel, Josephine Gay, Dawn Hochsprung, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine Hsu, Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, Ana Grace Marquez- Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Anne Marie Murphy, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Lauren Rousseau, Mary Sherlach, Victoria Soto, Benjamin Wheeler, and Allison Wyatt.

I'm going to remember those people for a long time in Newtown. I'm going to grieve with them and their families. We're also going to take their memories, the beauty of those kids, the heroism of those adults, and let it point us, let it point the strong, close-knit community of Newtown, Connecticut, let it point us to a way we can survive.

With that, I'd like to yield 5 minutes to my friend from the Third Congressional District of Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 833.

At this time I would yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

At this point, I would yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes).

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We've got a number of speakers, so we'll try to give 1\1/2\ minutes to as many as we can.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Colorado (Ms. DeGette).

I yield the gentlelady 30 additional seconds.

At this time I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. Speaker, at this point I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. McCarthy).

I thank the gentlelady.

At this point I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

Mr. Speaker, at this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

At this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo).

I thank the gentlewoman.

At this time, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Chu).

I thank the gentlewoman.

At this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

I thank the gentlewoman.

At this time, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).

I thank the gentleman.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

I thank the gentleman.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Curson).

I thank the gentleman.

At this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, at this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Clarke).

I thank the gentleman.

At this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from California (Mrs. Davis).

At this point, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

I thank the gentlelady for those words.

I am so pleased to have joining us on the floor the Democratic leader. I yield the customary 1 minute to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Pelosi).

I thank the Leader very much. I thank very much my delegation. And I thank all who have come down this evening to publicly express their support for the families of Newtown to help paint us a path forward; and thank you very much, everyone, for your private words as well.

I'll leave everyone with just two final thoughts. First, a thought about Newtown itself.

Newtown is a small town. It's a small town that is very close-knit. As I've said a number of times over the past few days, the pride of Newtown is the Labor Day parade. It's the biggest Labor Day parade in the State, and people from all over the State come to Newtown on Labor Day. Everybody in town spends half the year getting their float or their marching contingent ready--the school groups, the churches, the community and civic groups. It's a slice of Americana out of a Norman Rockwell painting. And that's Newtown. That's particularly Sandy Hook. And the closeness of this community, it makes the grief even deeper because everybody knows everybody. When a school, a community school has this many lost lives, it touches a little bit deeper.

But I think it also paints the path forward to recovery because people are so close, because you don't have to go too far to have somebody be able to reach out and grab your shoulder in order to give you a little bit of a boost, a pathway back. The closeness of Newtown makes it hurt more, but the closeness of Newtown will also make us heal as well.

We've got great leaders as well. Governor Malloy was on the ground within hours, and he basically has not left and has not slept. Pat Llodra, the first selectwoman, has been just an inspiration. The superintendent of schools, the police chief, and the all-volunteer fire department, these men and women

in the fire department, none of them are getting paid, and they've been down at the firehouse, out at the site, in the community almost without end since this incident.

And this final thought. On Sunday morning, Senator Blumenthal and I went to the church service at the local Congregational Church, and a guy grabbed us as we were walking out, gripped our arms tight and said, ``Make sure this never, ever happens again.''

You know, the honest truth is we can't make sure it never happens again, but we certainly can make it much less likely; and we can certainly find ways to make sure that if someone does slip through the cracks and they set themselves on a path of destruction, the path of destruction is nowhere near the scale we saw in Newtown.

We're grieving right now, and we're going to join this process of figuring out where we go from here very soon, but it helps to know that we have the support and the love and the sympathy and the thoughts of the United States House of Representatives. It will help me to be able to bring back this resolution to the people of Newtown and the people of Connecticut. And we know that very shortly we will join you, we will join the President in figuring out a way to make sure that, within our power, this doesn't happen again.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary next year. The Pinchot Institute carries on the legacy of Connecticut native son Gifford Pinchot, whose unique and reasoned approach to conservation endures as we face a new era of environmental challenges.

Born in Simsbury, Pinchot grew up inspired by childhood summers spent enjoying his hometown's natural beauty. Committed to forestry and preservation from an early age, Pinchot went on to found the Forestry School, the first of its kind, at Yale, his alma mater. He helped to establish the United States Forest Service, serving as its first Chief in 1905. Pinchot recognized the need to protect our natural heritage at a time of development unprecedented in our nation's history. Throughout his long career in public service, he was instrumental in raising the profile of the conservation movement to the national stage.

Pinchot's philosophy of ``practical idealism'' lives on in practice at Yale, at the Forest Service, and at the Pinchot Institute. Dedicated by President Kennedy in 1963, the Pinchot Institute works to balance the sustainable use of our natural resources with a commitment to preservation for future generations. The Pinchot Institute collaborates with organizations around the country and the world to develop non- partisan, innovative, and well-researched solutions to conservation problems. The Institute recognizes the role that sustainable forests can play in the health of our nation's communities, water resources, and wildlife.

The need for conservation also resonates with me on a personal level. I began my career in public service with a call to action against the destruction of wetlands in Southington, and I remain committed to the principles of environmental stewardship. Our public lands and fragile resources are preserved and maintained for more Americans than ever before due to the tireless efforts of organizations like the Pinchot Institute.

In recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring an organization at the forefront of its field.

Mr. Speaker, have you ever seen the movie ``Fatal Attraction''? It's a great film. The Glenn Close character is so obsessed with Michael Douglas that she does everything within her power to try to win him over, flipping out at the end of the movie by going and boiling the Douglas family bunny. Well, Mr. Speaker, I would submit that, having now had 30 different debates on this floor over repeal of the health care bill, the House Republicans have finally hit their boil-the-bunny moment.

Enough is enough. The American people want us to move on. And what they would suggest is, instead of listening to their inner Glenn Close, that maybe House Republicans should start listening to people like Colleen, a 61-year-old retired teacher from Danbury. She's got diabetes; she's got sleep apnea. What she wants is not more politics on the floor of the House of Representatives; she wants relief. She doesn't want another 5-hour debate on top of the other 29. She wants this bill implemented.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I would like to thank the chairman for his assistance and leadership in bringing this bill forward today.

This legislation before us, as Chairman Whitfield stated, is pretty simple. It will allow FERC the permissive authority to allow several communities in my district to operate two very small hydroelectric dams as municipal power sources. The Upper and Lower Collinsville dams have been dormant along Connecticut's Farmington River since the 1960s. The licenses that were fairly recently previously issued by FERC to operate both small dams are currently inactive. This legislation would allow FERC the opportunity to reinstate them and transfer them to the town of Canton, Connecticut, for operation.

These two small dams are already a beloved and long-standing symbol of the Farmington Valley's rich history. Today, however, we can help make them a symbol of the valley's future as well--retrofitting them to provide clean energy to power thousands of homes and businesses.

This legislation was the product of a sustained and collaborative process with State and local stakeholders, FERC, and river protection organizations. The bill provides for an additional comment period on any FERC licensing action, as well as on the licenses' environmental provisions--ensuring that public input is respected and the river's health is protected.

While we work to enact policies that will accelerate our transition to energy independence, we shouldn't neglect these smaller projects that can begin that process right here and now, and this bill represents that kind of opportunity.

This isn't the first time we've considered this bill in this Chamber. Identical legislation passed the House by voice vote on June 16, 2010. However, the Senate didn't take up the bill that year. As such, I'm hopeful we can muster the same bipartisan spirit today and again pass this noncontroversial energy legislation.

Again, I'd like to thank Chairman Whitfield, as well as Chairman Upton and Ranking Members Waxman and Rush and their staffs, for helping bring this legislation to the floor today. We do this institution credit with this kind of bipartisan legislation. Again to the chairman, I appreciate it, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the value of the medical device industry in my State and our nation as a whole. This industry is working on some of the most exciting and cutting-edge technologies in the entire health care sector and has changed the lives of millions of Americans.

According to estimates, the medical device industry employs approximately 430,000 nationwide. My State is fortunate to have a vibrant medical device industry with nearly 8,000 individuals directly employed at companies, such as BD and Covidien. These companies also support approximately 12,000 more in-direct jobs in my home state. Beyond providing quality, high-paying jobs, these businesses are responsible corporate citizens who are trying to enhance the communities where they are located and the people who live there. For example, employees at BD's plant in Canaan, Connecticut--which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary--have served as mentors to the Housatonic Valley Regional High School and have contributed generously to the United Way and other local charities. In line with a growing body of evidence on the positive impact bariatric surgery can have on diabetics, Covidien has worked with American Diabetes Association to fund new research on this potentially life-changing procedure.

Unfortunately, when the House recently considered the Health Care Cost Reduction Act of 2012 (H.R. 436), the majority included an offset that, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, would result in 350,000 fewer Americans receiving health care coverage. As part of the Affordable Care Act, the Federal Government is set to provide millions of Americans with premium tax credits for the purchase of health insurance. This will not only increase rates of coverage but will also lead to lower overall health costs since more people are insured. The offset that was included in H.R. 436, known as the ``true-up'' provision, would have subjected these individuals to large repayment amounts if for some reason their income levels increased from the time that they were actually receiving coverage to the time they filed their taxes the following year. This could come as a result of the individual or spouse starting a new job or returning to work after school. While I could not support this legislation, I understand the need to reduce the medical device industry's burden in paying for health care reform.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that we can all agree that to maintain our position as the world leader in biotechnology, the United States needs to foster innovation and growth within our health care industries. I am proud that I represent a number of those companies and hope that we will find bipartisan solutions to create an environment where they will continue to succeed and develop new breakthrough therapies.

Barely.

Thank you very much, Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz. I don't think that we were ever allowed down on the House floor this early. It was normally close to the witching hour when I, Representative Ryan, you, and Representative Meek were down here, but it is wonderful to be back here.

I was really touched when you approached me earlier today to ask me to come and say a few words, because the Murphys are not a very well known Jewish American family. Yet in Connecticut we are so, so proud of the legacy that we have helped contribute to with respect to Jewish American heritage, and this is a great way to be part of this month's celebration.

You know, the list is long in Connecticut. You know, I think about somebody like Annie Fisher, who was one of the pioneers of special education in this country trying to segment out a different way to teach kids with learning disabilities. She was the first female principal, first female superintendent in Hartford, Connecticut.

I think about a young guy by the name of Kid Kaplan, who was from my district, from Meriden, Connecticut, was a featherweight champion of the world, one of the top 10 featherweights by most people's estimates. But I think maybe most about some of the political legacy that Jewish Americans from Connecticut have left this country.

I think a lot about Abraham Ribicoff. Abraham Ribicoff was everything in Connecticut. He was our Governor, he was our Senator, he was our Congressman. He faced, not so quietly, the prejudice that so many Jewish Americans faced as they entered into political life and commercial life throughout the last 100 years.

He talked openly when he first ran for Governor about walking into social halls and hearing prejudiced whispers throughout the room as he walked in. He also talked about taking that prejudice head on. He would walk up to the podium, and he would talk about the fact that he had lived the American Dream as the son of Polish immigrants, as a young guy who grew up working in zipper and buckle factories throughout the Hartford region, that he was living the American Dream, that if he could do it so could everybody else and their kids in that room.

He was probably best known for a moment at the podium of the Democratic National Convention in 1968 when Chicago police were outside treating protesters fairly roughly. He was the one member of the political elite to stand up on that podium and call them out for their tactics, and even with the mayor of that city sitting in the front row calling him some pretty unfriendly names. He kept his cool and is credited with essentially marginalizing that kind of violence, certainly with historical hindsight.

Maybe most important is that Abraham Ribicoff also saw his role as one of the leading American Jewish political figures in this country to help pave the way for others. He had a young intern, not long after he became U.S. Senator, named Joe Lieberman. He hired, in the early 1970s, his administrative assistant, a young hot-shot lawyer named Richard Blumenthal.

The two of them, both given their political sea legs by Abraham Ribicoff, are today proudly serving as Connecticut's two United States Senators, both part of our proud political tradition in Connecticut of Jewish American participation in American politics.

I am really thrilled to be down here with you to share my gratitude for what Jewish Americans in Connecticut have meant to our cultural life, to our educational life, to our sporting life and, yes, to our political life. Representative Wasserman Schultz,

thank you for your leadership and thank you for allowing me and asking me to come down this evening.

I thank the ranking member.

I rise today to support my amendment, No. 97, originally introduced as the American Jobs Matter Act, that is included in this en bloc package. This amendment will finally allow American manufacturers to compete fairly for Department of Defense contracts.

My State, which has built submarines for the Navy and has supplied our Armed Forces for generations, has lost about 130,000 manufacturing jobs in the last 20 years, and this country has lost about 6 million. At the same time, the Department of Defense, which is the largest purchaser of goods in the world, has been aggressively outsourcing work to foreign firms.

Instead of finding ways to get around the Buy America law, the DOD should be doing more to help protect manufacturing jobs here at home. When we lose the capacity to produce an item that our military needs, we put ourselves at risk, and we also lose jobs.

This amendment simply allows for the Federal Government to consider the number of jobs being created here in the United States as a part of a bid for U.S. defense work. Frankly, most of my constituents and our constituents probably think this already happens, but this is an important amendment for job creation and also for U.S. national security.

I would like to thank Chairman McKeon and Ranking Member Smith for their willingness to work together on this issue.

Thank you very much, Mr. Rahall.

I rise in support of this motion to instruct. Over the past year, the President and Democrats have proposed a series of measures to spend a little bit of money to put people back to work, to spend some money to educate our kids, to build some new schools, to expand broadband. Every single one of those efforts has been met by resistance from Republicans. I realize why that is. The argument is that we don't have any more money to spend. I get that argument. What I don't get is the argument against this motion.

What this motion says is that forget spending new money. Let's just make sure that the money that we are already obligated to spend is spent on American jobs. No new money. Let's just redirect the money that we're spending on bridges, on roads, on railways, and make sure that it gets spent on U.S. companies.

It's wrong to suggest that we're talking about dramatically ratcheting up Buy American standards such that we're going to ignite some trade war with WTO companies. That's not what we're talking about here today. Buy American laws have been on the books for generations. What we're talking about is just bringing Buy American standards back to what they used to be.

The fact is that we have blown hole after hole after hole in Buy American, in part because the Chamber of Commerce, which opposes this motion to instruct, thinks it's a good thing for big multinational companies who bid on a lot of this work to be able to take big chunks of it overseas where they can drive down the cost to them and keep a bigger differential of the contract.

Let me give you an example of these loopholes. One loophole is a provision that allows you to segment a contract into all sorts of small, little pieces. When you segment that contract into small pieces, each one of those pieces can result in the amount of the particular contract being so small that it doesn't qualify for Buy American.

Well, on one particular bridge contract in San Francisco, by segmenting out the contract and getting around Buy American, we lost 43,000 tons of steel to a Chinese steel company. American jobs lost.

When you allow for every country that signs a trade agreement to be exempt from Buy American, this happened. Guess what? Today we make our dog tags on a European-made machine simply because the country that makes it is exempt from Buy American, and they bid 4 percent less than the American company did. American jobs lost.

We win when we enforce Buy American because what happens is a company gets a contract. They subcontract with other American companies, and the ripple effect of that one initial contract multiplies jobs times three throughout the economy. Every time we send a contract overseas, yes, it may save that particular bid 3 or 4 or 5 percent. But when we lose that job here in America, when we have to start paying unemployment compensation, when we lose the taxes to the Federal Government, when that unemployed worker's kids need to go on Medicaid, guess what? That 3 or 4 or 5 percent disappears overnight. Let's pass this motion to instruct.