Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, this Saturday, students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, are going to lead hundreds of thousands of Americans all around the country in calling for commonsense gun control measures at the March For Our Lives.

Since this terrible shooting in Parkland, FL, on Valentine's Day, we have seen students all across the country say: Enough. This is a movement that cannot be stopped, and, frankly, we owe it to the students--the next generation--to get this right in the policies and the laws we adopt.

Just a few weeks ago, I went to one of the student's homes in Parkland--a group of them. We talked. Indeed, just last week, a number of the students came to my office here in Washington. It is amazing that at 15, 16, and 17 years old, these students are looking to us in this Congress to, at a minimum, consider legislation that could have prevented the slaughter that happened in Parkland just a month ago.

In Florida, we have witnessed these students march on the State capitol and demand action. The legislature listened, in part. They made some changes in the law, like changing the age to 21 to buy an assault rifle. That is the same age in Florida law that says you can't buy a handgun until age 21. It was a small step, but it was a step in the right direction to address the problem we are confronting, but we need to do more.

I am so grateful for the resilience of these students, the power of their voices, and the strength of their activism, moving the lawmakers in Washington and in State capitals all across this country to act.

The students, the parents, the teachers, all of them we have asked: What do you want? And they say, obviously, we want commonsense things. We can start with universal background checks in the purchase of a weapon. That would then allow, universally, if you have a background check, you couldn't go to a gun show where there is not a federally licensed dealer and acquire a weapon without having a background check. Why is having a background check a commonsense thing to do? Because you not only pick up someone with a criminal record, you would pick up someone who had a restraining order for whatever reason--it could be mental, it could be domestic abuse. You would pick up somebody being on the terrorist watch list or you could pick up someone who had been on the terrorist watch list. That was the case with the killer in the Orlando Pulse Night Club shooting.

Clearly, that is a commonsense thing to approach this problem.

There is another commonsense thing; that is, these military assault rifles with the long--what I call the banana clips. These are clips that are shaped like a banana or even straight ones that hold 30 rounds. You know, there are State laws in the country that if you are going to hunt wild game, there are certain restrictions on the number of shells or bullets you can put in your gun. My goodness, why wouldn't we want to say there is a limitation on the number of bullets in a clip instead of these long clips that have 30 rounds?

It was used even in the shooting out in Arizona that our colleague Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was one of the victims of, and it was when the gunman was reloading with another clip that he was tackled to the ground; otherwise, there would have been more people who would have been harmed that day.

So it is another commonsense thing that people are asking for and that these students are bringing to light as they argue this case; that they don't want to be in a school where they have this kind of violence that is threatened. The students, the teachers, the parents just want our schools and our communities to be safe. As we have seen across the country, we have had too much violence with these military-style weapons. Nightclubs, churches, movie theaters, outdoor concerts--it goes on and on. Students want to feel safe, and what some students have witnessed is unimaginable.

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Mr. NELSON. The velocity of a bullet fired from an assault weapon compared to the velocity of a handgun is three times the velocity or speed of the handgun bullet. As a result, when that bullet hits its target, the energy is nine times that hitting the target than what a handgun bullet does.

They built a movement now that inspires student walks across the country. In just 5 days, they are inspiring marches across the country, and the future is bright because of these students. But it is up to us to make sure that what happened in Parkland never happens again.

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