Oxford High School Mass Shooting
Floor Speech
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Ms. SLOTKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today in the shadow of a terrible tragedy that has shaken my district and the entire State of Michigan to its core.
Oxford, Michigan, is a quiet town in northern Oakland County. It is a small, close-knit community where folks know and care for each other. But just 2 days ago, in less than 5 minutes, the heart of the town was ripped out in a flurry of screams and gunfire.
On Tuesday, a 15-year-old boy walked into his Oxford High School and took the lives of four of his fellow students, four young Michiganders with their entire lives ahead of them.
I mentioned them in our moment of silence, but it bears repeating.
Hana St. Juliana was an exuberant freshman on the volleyball and basketball team. She babysat for a friend of mine and brought joy to all who knew her. She made her high school debut on the basketball team on Monday night. Hana was 14 years old.
Madisyn Baldwin was going to graduate this year, and she had already been accepted to several colleges, some with a full scholarship. She had a younger half-brother and two sisters, and her friends described her as an artist who loved to draw and read and write. Madisyn was 17.
Tate Myre was a tight end and running back on the varsity football team and an honor student. Already, there is a petition with more than 80,000 signatures circulating to rename Oxford's football stadium in honor of Tate. He was 16 years old.
Justin Shilling was a senior getting ready for life after high school. He was the co-captain of the school's bowling team, and he worked part time at Anita's Kitchen, a restaurant in nearby Lake Orion. Justin was 17.
The loss of these four young people has ripped a hole in our community, and the trauma inflicted on their friends and classmates will never fully subside.
No one has been left unscathed. The aftershocks of the senseless act of violence are being felt across the State, most clearly in the 60 school districts that have been forced to cancel school out of an abundance of caution due to copycat threats.
All of us can see ourselves in the parents, students, and teachers at Oxford, but we can't begin to imagine their pain.
As agonizing as the last few days have been, the place to take solace is in the incredible response of the hundreds of first responders who jumped into action to end the violence before more lives were taken.
Yesterday, I visited the professionals at the Oakland County Operations Center, which was the eye of the hurricane on Tuesday, and heard firsthand accounts of heroism, bravery, and dedication under extreme stress.
In the darkness of the event, the light we should try and focus on is that, in our hour of need, our first responders were trained and ready. They did not hesitate. In the span of just a few minutes, the gunman fired 30 shots, hitting 11 people. Four of them are dead.
When the gunman was stopped by law enforcement inside the school, he had 18 rounds left. I shudder to think about how much more damage could have been done if those officers hadn't stopped him so quickly.
The people who responded on Tuesday saved lives unequivocally. The training, speed, and efficiency of those on site made all the difference, and I want to speak directly to them for a moment.
First, to the teachers who have been through so much in these last 2 years and who jumped into action when the crisis struck; to the police officers and sheriff's deputies who headed straight into the school without hesitation and who told me, ``We were going inside no matter what. We were never going to simply stage outside and wait to assess the risks to ourselves''; to all the firefighters and first responders from our area and well beyond who didn't wait for direction and simply steamed straight for Oxford; to the 911 dispatch operators who took more than 100 calls from terrified children whispering and crying from their hiding places, and the dispatch shift leaders who ran the massive logistical operation to coordinate over 300 first responders at the school; and to the doctors, nurses, EMS, and hospital staff who put emergency procedures in place and all answered the call to help, what you did saved children, and teachers, and administrators.
You saved someone's child, someone's brother, someone's mom. You kept people on this Earth for their families to cherish and hold close. And every one of them will remember that day and the role you played. There are children in that school who will go on to be police officers and firefighters and doctors because of how you responded this week, and for that, we owe you so much.
Madam Speaker, over the last few days, I have thought a great deal about the sacrifices we ask our kids to make and the burdens we ask them to bear. We are all so exhausted seeing fleeing students, panicked parents, and bewildered teachers.
The inescapable conclusion we must draw is that we are failing our children, not just failing to keep them safe but failing to set an example. Our daily rhetoric continues to deteriorate. Threats of violence are commonplace.
As someone who worked alongside the military for years, I was trained that leadership climate is set at the top. Whether you are the leader of a platoon or a small town, or simply the head of a household, the leadership style you use in your own life will be internalized by those you lead. It will become the standard. Nowhere is this more clear than with our kids.
The hard truth is that violence, including gun violence, has become normal. Threatening someone online has become normal. Inciting violence and calling for violence has become normal. People do it online, in neighborhood forums, at school board meetings, at hospitals, on airplanes, and even on the steps of this Capitol, like it is nothing at all, like it is somehow part of their freedom of speech. But it is not.
Threatening other people is where our freedom of speech ends. But how are kids to understand that? How are they to rationalize the lessons they learned in kindergarten to treat others as we would like to be treated if they see adults demonstrating the opposite?
That betrayal has taken hold in the roots of our communities. Not a day goes by that I don't hear about it, and our kids are watching our every move.
This tragedy also makes clear that we are in desperate need of mental health support for our young people. Services and providers are scarce, and there is no way of meeting the need, especially in the wake of COVID.
Our children are using violence, contemplating suicide, and generally struggling more than at any other time in our history, and we must acknowledge that and provide the resources to our communities to manage the demand.
In these first 48 hours since the attack, that is where my office and so many others have been trying to engage, to find Federal money, to find State money. We need to address the mental health crisis in this country with the seriousness that it demands or be prepared to live with the consequences.
In the immediate aftermath of tragedy, in these moments of intense suffering, there is often a need to understand what to do with our pain by jumping into politics and policy. I must admit, I am torn about that discussion because my community is still reeling from the crisis, and our attention has been focused on immediate crisis response.
But there are some basic facts that simply can't be swept under the rug: that a deadly weapon purchased legally fell into the hands of a 15-year-old child. I come from a family of gun owners. I was trained to carry two different firearms on my person at all times during my three tours with the CIA in Iraq.
But if a 15-year-old boy can get ahold of a weapon purchased by his father on a Friday and use it to terrorize and murder his classmates on a Tuesday, something in our country is horribly wrong.
Whether we like it or not, Oxford will be a town that our kids read about, joining a long list of communities that have become synonymous with the greatest tragedies our country has seen: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Santa Fe, and so many more.
This is, sadly, not a new set of issues. Long before the events in Oxford, the U.S. House passed a bill requiring basic background checks for purchases of any and all guns, just like we do at Walmart now.
This bill had both Democratic and Republican cosponsors. It was one of those rare instances of this body rising to the occasion with some basic common sense. We voted on this bill a few years ago in the last Congress, and we voted on it again this last March 2021.
That bill is currently sitting in the U.S. Senate. It could be voted on tomorrow if there was a will to act.
Please, to our colleagues in the Senate, take up this important bipartisan legislation.
I am also focused on what it means to be a responsible gun owner. Michigan is full of them, including my own family. But if you are going to own a gun, you should be responsible for storing it safely and for taking basic steps to ensure that the gun doesn't end up in the hands of a child or a criminal or a dangerous person. Adults should be held accountable for how they handle their guns.
This is an issue we are particularly watching in Oxford, where the Oakland County prosecutor is considering charging the parents of the shooter for their child's access to that gun. This is one of the areas we are looking at for additional legislation, and I know that a similar bill is being looked at in the Michigan legislature.
In the coming days and week, more facts will emerge from this horrible tragedy and help guide our thinking on how to ensure that our children--Hana, Madisyn, Tate, and Justin--did not die in vain.
To my colleagues in both parties, I look to you all, every single one of you, to join me in recognizing the pain that our community is going through and to make sure it means something.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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