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Ms. BALDWIN. Madam President, last week--let's start with last weekend--Americans woke to the news of a horrific mass murder in Orlando, FL. The gunman, a U.S. citizen inspired by terrorists, legally purchased a weapon of war and turned it upon members of the LGBT community on Latin night at a nightclub in Orlando, FL--49 dead, 53 wounded.
Senators returned from their home States last week to express thoughts and prayers and to observe moments of silence. Many of us resolved that while important, those sentiments were not enough and that we needed to follow up those thoughts, those prayers, and those moments of silence with action.
I joined with my colleagues on the floor when Senator Murphy of Connecticut held the floor for 15 hours to draw attention to two commonsense amendments that would have limited that easy access to a weapon of war by closing a loophole that allows so many of our firearms purchases to occur without a proper background check and to close something we are calling the terror gap, which would allow the FBI the authority to deny gun purchases to people who are on a watch list, suspected of connections with terrorism. Those measures gained a vote in the Senate last night, but both failed to advance.
I don't think we can simply say that we tried and continue to accept shootings like the one in Orlando as the new normal and then move on to other business--especially, I might add, with our procedural posture right now, as the Senate has before it at this period in time the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, a measure in which we can prioritize our response to this tragedy and the preceding tragedies through amendments perfecting the measure before us. Americans are demanding more. We can't just carry on as usual in the wake of these enormous domestic tragedies. Wisconsinites are demanding more. Just in this last week, I received heartbreaking communications from my constituents asking us to act. I will briefly share two of them.
A young mother wrote to me:
I am a young mother of two young children and every day that they go to school I say a silent prayer that they come home safely to me, that no one decides to walk into their school or onto their bus with a gun and an intent to kill.
Another young person wrote to me:
As a young LGBTQ person, I am devastated by this attack on my community. I am scared that this attack happened in what was supposed to be a safe place, a free space in a world that is often hostile for LGBTQ people. I am scared for my safety and for the safety of my community. I am also angry. I am angry that the United States is the only country where shootings like this regularly occur, and I am angry that our government is not doing enough to prevent this kind of violence.
The attack in Orlando was, as I mentioned, an act that allegedly was inspired by maybe ISIL or other terrorist groups, but it was also an act of hate, a hate crime. I have filed an amendment with my colleagues, Senator Mikulski of Maryland and Senator Hirono of Hawaii, to increase funding to strengthen the prevention of hate crimes and the enforcement of our hate crimes laws and our civil rights laws. The amendment is now cosponsored by 18 other Members of the Senate.
I think it is important to understand what a hate crime is. A hate crime is an underlying criminal act--so it is not about hate thought or hate speech--wherein the victim of the crime or victims of the crime are targeted based on a particular characteristic. Sometimes we hear about hate crimes committed against the LGBT community because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, but hate crimes are often perpetrated against people on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender. Hate crimes targeted against people based on their characteristics are done so because not only are the victims victimized, but it sends a message of terror and hate throughout a community to all people who share characteristics with the victim or who love people who share the characteristics of the victim. They are terrifying, and they deserve, as we have chosen to do in the United States, to be treated very specifically as hate crimes.
It is only recently that the United States recognized hate crimes against members of the LGBT community or against women or people with disabilities with the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
There are too many of these hate crimes in the news these days. We are still grieving the massive numbers of dead and injured in Orlando. It was not all that long ago that Charleston had a mass murder in a church. The African-American community was targeted. In Wisconsin, in another place of worship, in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, WI, a gunman came and targeted the congregation during Sunday worship.
In America, hate crimes overall are declining. That is good news, and that says something about what we can do together when we pass strong laws and try to prevent these crimes, educate, and enforce our laws. But I am sad to share that while overall our hate crimes are declining, those against some groups--most notably Muslims and members of the LGBT community--are on the rise. LGBT people are more likely than any other group to be targeted for hate violence, and LGBT people of color, particularly transgender women of color, are at the very greatest risk.
The amendment I have offered, along with my colleagues, Senators Mikulski and Hirono, would provide, in the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, additional funding for the Civil Rights Division to focus on hate crimes prevention on the one hand but also enforcement and prosecution of those crimes when they occur. This amendment will provide important tools to the Justice Department that they need to combat discrimination and crimes of hate in communities across the country. I am pleased to have a large number of human rights organizations in this country endorse this as an important step forward.
We need to take action. We need to do more to address terrorism, to address gun violence, and to address hate crimes. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to join me in calling for a vote on this amendment and supporting it when we get that opportunity.
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