Gun Violence

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the whole world knows that on June 12, a gunman shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in the worst mass shooting in modern American history, but what they may not know is, there has been at least 10 other mass shooting incidents in America since Orlando. By mass shootings, I mean incidents where at least four people were injured or killed by gunfire.

Two of those mass shootings were in Chicago, in my home State of Illinois. On June 13, five men were shot in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, and on June 18, four people were shot in the middle of the afternoon in the South Shore neighborhood. Fortunately, none of the victims in these two Chicago mass shootings were fatally wounded, but since the Orlando shooting, there have been many other gunshot victims in Chicago who have lost their lives.

Last Friday, Yvonne Nelson, a city worker, was shot and killed walking out of a coffee shop on the South Side in the middle of the afternoon. The shooter was aiming for someone else in an apparent gang dispute, but Ms. Nelson was shot in the chest and killed. She was 49 years old, a member of the New Life Covenant Church, and beloved by friends and family. She was described as a beautiful person, hard- working, loving, kind. She was taken from us last Friday.

Last Thursday, Denzel Thornton, who worked for the Chicago Public School System, was shot and killed outside the entrance of McNair Elementary School in the South Austin neighborhood shortly after noon. He was 25 years old, a graduate of DePaul University, and aspired to be a chef. He was a promising young man with a bright future ahead of him. He was taken from us in the middle of the day as the elementary school children looked on.

This past weekend, 13 people were shot and killed in Chicago, and at least 41 others were injured by gunfire. The youngest shooting victim was only 3 years old.

So far this year, over 1,700 men, women, and children have been wounded or killed by gunfire in the city of Chicago. I will keep the victims and their families and loved ones in my thoughts and prayers, but thoughts and prayers are not enough. As lawmakers, it is our responsibility to do everything in our power to protect the people we represent and to stop the killing in the neighborhoods of America.

Last Friday, I visited the city of Chicago and went to several different spots to get a perspective on this gun violence and killing. I met for an hour with the superintendent of police, Eddie Johnson. He has 28 years on the Chicago police force. This is man who started as a patrolman. He understands the violence on the streets. We talked about so many different things.

They have identified 1,300 who they suspect are most likely to be shooters or victims. By and large, these are men with a history of gun violence. Over the Memorial Day weekend, approximately 66 people were shot in the city of Chicago, and 80 percent of them came from the list. So we have a finite list of suspects whose names pop up more often than not when it comes to this gun violence. We talked about ways to address it, and there are many people thinking about how to deal with it in the right way, in a constitutional way but with a specific strategy to end this gun violence.

The superintendent told me a story. He said: You know, after you have been a cop in Chicago for a while, you get pretty tough. There aren't many things that make you emotional, but I do remember when there was a shooting in a home and a grandmother was killed and a toddler next to her was killed. We arrested the 15-year-old.

The superintendent said: I looked in his eyes, and I said: What were you thinking to spray that gun into that home and killing that grandmother and that toddler, and he said that young man looked him in the eye and said: They shouldn't have been there. They should have known better.

The superintendent said: I was crushed with that comment.

I talked to him about a visit I made to the juvenile facility about 6 weeks ago in Chicago to meet some of the young people who were waiting to stand trial. They had been charged with adult crimes. They are in the juvenile facility being held until the date of the trial. Some of them wait 1 year to 2 years. They take on a life in this juvenile center. There is a high school, a gym, activities, and there is also counseling. For many of these young people, this is the first time ever that someone with professional credentials sat down with them and tried to figure out what was going on in their minds and why they would commit these crimes of violence.

Afterward, I asked one of the counselors: What kind of mental condition do you find in these young people who are engaged in this random violence? He said they find everything--a spectrum of mental illness, from bipolar to schizophrenia, to acute depression, and on and on and on--but he said there is one recurring finding: 92 percent of these juveniles have a recurring issue. I asked: What is it? He said that 92 percent of them have either been the victims of or witnessed violent trauma.

When we think about PTSD--men and women who take on the uniform of the United States and go off to war and who either hurt themselves or witness violence that occurs on the battlefield--and they come home troubled and needing counseling and help. By and large, these folks are over the age of 18, but now we are talking about teenagers and adolescents having gone through the same or similar experience with violence. What impact does that have on the human mind of an adolescent? Are we dealing with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder that makes them so hardened and callused that they don't even appreciate the violence of their own lives and their own acts? I think that is a very real concern.

Let me quickly interject that struggling with mental illness does not mean you are going to be a violent criminal at all. It is more likely that you are going to be the victim of a crime with your mental illness or mental condition, but we have to take an honest look at this aspect of what we are dealing with when it comes to violence.

Friday night, I went to visit a friend--a controversial friend, to some a radical Catholic priest in Chicago but from where I am standing, the man who has given his life to a neighborhood who desperately needs it. His name is Mike Pfleger, and he is a Catholic priest at St. Sabina in Chicago. He had a peace march on Friday night. Father Mike brought out 400 people--300 African American and 100 White and Hispanic. We had a rally and at that rally mothers stood up and read the names of those under the age of 20 who have been killed this year in the city of Chicago. They read 150 names ranging from 20 years of age to zero, babies who were shot and killed.

There were a lot of tears that night over the losses, and a reminder that the statistics we read every single day in a newspaper are real human lives causing real human pain and suffering to the families who survive. Then, Father Mike rallied everybody and took them out on a march through the neighborhood there, trying to reclaim one of the toughest, most challenging areas in the city of Chicago.

So what are we going to do about it--the U.S. Senate right here in Washington, DC? Last night, it was a disappointment.

Many of us took to the floor to join Senator Murphy last week in his filibuster. He was the leader, and I give him the credit for his steely determination to stand here--literally, stand here for, I believe, 15 hours in a filibuster--to force the votes we had last night. Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, agreed to have those votes, and after they were finished, all four amendments were defeated. I am sure many people across the country said: What a waste of time that the Senate would acknowledge the problem, yet not find a solution to move forward. Well, I would add quickly that we haven't given up and we shouldn't. Senator Susan Collins of Maine is working on an amendment right now relative to the question of whether a suspected terrorist should be able to buy firearms in America. I think that is a pretty clear question and answer. Most Americans, 90 percent, say for goodness' sake, stop suspected terrorists from getting their hands on weapons. Yet the Senate defeated Senator Feinstein's effort last night to do just that. I voted for it, but it didn't get the 60 votes needed.

Senator Collins has picked up the banner, and she is trying to put together a bipartisan measure. We haven't seen it in its entirety, but I encourage her, and I have tried by working with her to plug in some of the gaps and answer some of the questions about her approach. I hope she is successful, and I hope a bipartisan measure emerges from the Senate and puts pressure on the House of Representatives. There is absolutely no excuse for us not doing everything in our power to keep semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of suspected terrorists, convicted felons, and those who suffer from serious mental instability.

How deadly are these weapons? There is something called Snapchat, which I am not an expert on by any means, but it is a video that lasts about 10 seconds. One of the victims at Pulse nightclub in Orlando turned on her Snapchat video as the firing started, and in the span of 9 seconds, you can count 17 rounds that were fired into the crowd, one of which killed the woman who was taking the video. That is the kind of weapon this crazed man was able to buy and take into a nightclub and kill 49 innocent people and injure more than 50.

Why would we make that easy for someone who is a suspected terrorist? Does that really reflect what we feel in America? I don't think so. Ninety percent of Americans think we should do just the opposite and stop these suspected terrorists from having easy access.

There was an amendment offered yesterday by Senator Cornyn of Texas, supported by the National Rifle Association. It did not pass. I voted against it. It was not a valid approach to dealing with this issue because Senator Cornyn required, if a suspected terrorist was going to buy a firearm, that the burden was on the U.S. Government to go to court if they challenged their being on the terrorist list. The burden was on the government, within 72 hours, to come up with a lawsuit, a criminal action, to stop the person from buying a firearm. If the same person wanted to get on an airplane in the State of Texas and was on a no-fly list, they wouldn't get on the airplane. It wouldn't be a question of the government going to court to prove it. For the safety of the other passengers, we would keep the suspected terrorist off the airplane. Why not when it comes to semi-automatic weapons? Shouldn't the burden at least be in favor of security and safety for the people of the United States?

That is still an issue for us to resolve. Is Congress doing all it can to stop the daily toll of gun violence and the involvement of guns with suspected terrorists? Not even close. So many shootings are preventable. They never would have happened if our laws did a better job keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people. But too many Members of Congress are too afraid to stand up to the gun lobby. They are afraid to vote for commonsense reforms, supported by 90 percent of the American people, for fear that the NRA will come after them in the next election.

Remember, the gun lobby fights laws that make it harder for them to sell guns. First and foremost, they are not constitutional scholars. They are sellers of firearms, and they want to sell increasingly large volumes of their product so they make more profits. The National Rifle Association and gun lobby groups are constantly working to weaken laws on the books and prevent any new laws that might prevent gun sales. As a result, we have a ludicrous set of loopholes in our laws that allows criminals, the mentally ill, and even suspected terrorists to buy guns. We can't let this continue. As lawmakers, we have a responsibility to protect Americans from gun violence. After last night's votes, it is clear we haven't done our job.

Last week, the American Medical Association declared in an official statement that gun violence in America is ``a public health crisis requiring a comprehensive public health response and solution.'' This was the first such declaration that has been made by our Nation's largest medical association, and I commend the AMA for their leadership.

The numbers behind their decision are staggering. Every year, almost 32,000 Americans are killed with guns. On an average day in America, 297 Americans are shot, and 91 of those shootings are fatal. Communities across the Nation are affected by this violence. In cities like Chicago, the daily toll of these shootings is devastating.

Last week, when I joined Senator Murphy and almost 40 other Democratic colleagues, we spoke out or tried to speak out to get the Senate to debate this issue--not just a quick driveby vote of four amendments, take it or leave it, but a meaningful debate with real alternatives brought to the floor. The filibuster lasted 15 hours and caught the attention of the Nation. Having been in this business for a while, I can tell whether our activities here are even noticed. They were. That filibuster was noticed. People came up to me and said: Thank goodness you are finally going to say something, do something, and vote on this issue of ending gun violence.

Well, words are not enough, and the votes last night are not enough. We need to start with commonsense reform supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans. Keeping firearms out of the hands of suspected terrorists shouldn't even be debated; it is so obvious. We should prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns and make sure an FBI criminal background check is conducted every time a gun is sold.

There is no excuse for what is going on now in Northern Indiana. Gun shows take place there regularly. Guns are sold in volume out of those gun shows with no background checks on the buyers. So the gangbangers of Chicago and the others head over to Northern Indiana--it is just across the border--fill up their trunks with guns and bring them into the city of Chicago.

The police department in the city of Chicago has confiscated one crime gun per hour for every day this year, and we still have a huge backlog of guns that are floating through the community in the hands of those who have no business owning or using a gun. The Chicago Police Department is trying to keep up with this wave of firearms flooding our city. They have confiscated more guns than the cities of New York and Los Angeles combined, and they still can't keep up with it.

There is no excuse for the gun show loophole. We should have serious, meaningful background checks of everyone purchasing firearms. The conscientious, self-respecting gun owners of America agree with this. They went through a background check to buy their guns. They think people should do that as well to avoid selling guns to the wrong people.

We must never forget our obligation to do everything we can to keep America safe. Our first obligation is to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and insure domestic tranquility in the United States. If that is our obligation, there is much more that needs to be done--keeping America safe from gun violence.

Thousands of Americans are shot and killed each year in shootings that could have been prevented. There are steps we can take that are consistent with our Constitution. With our tradition of supporting hunting, sports shooting, guns for self-defense, we can still take meaningful steps to avoid tragic death, and we shouldn't be afraid to do that.

I am not going to quit on this issue, and many of my colleagues will not either. I ask the American people, don't quit and don't get discouraged. Keep speaking out for commonsense reforms as the American Medical Association did last week. When people ask me what they can do, I say: In our democratic form of government, it is very basic. It is called an election. If this issue of gun safety means something to you, ask that Member of Congress or the congressional candidate, that Senator or the Senatorial candidate, where they stand. If it is important enough, make your vote follow the answer. Join us and stand together. We can beat back the gun lobby and start saving lives and protecting the innocent across America. We can do this, and we must.

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