Gun Violence in America

Floor Speech

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Mr. DeSAULNIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time and for hosting this discussion tonight.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about gun violence and all its horror, the images that often come to mind are mass shootings, assaults, and murders. These tragedies are an important part of the conversation, and, unfortunately, too much discussion in American everyday life, but do not represent how most Americans will encounter gun violence.

Every day in America, up to two-thirds of the gun deaths come about because of gun suicides, which account, again, for a disproportionate amount of gun deaths in the United States every day. This wasn't about self-defense, this was about Americans taking their own lives.

Mr. Speaker, 35 years ago, on April 20, I lost my own father to gun suicide. I was the last of my four siblings to talk to him, and he gave no indication, from 3,000 miles away from where I lived at the time, that he was considering suicide.

Mr. Speaker, 35 years later, we have not done enough to address this epidemic of suicide. For far too many people, they continue to lose loved ones the same way I did.

What is most troubling, gun deaths amongst children and teens rose 50 percent in just 2 years, between 2019 and 2021, and firearm suicides amongst those ages 10 to 24 is at its highest rate in more than 20 years.

Mr. Speaker, 10- to 24-year-olds in the United States are experiencing an uber epidemic of gun suicides. These statistics are sobering, and we need to take action now.

Fortunately, research has shown that there are solutions that we can do to help stop this. Gun suicide rates in States with the strongest gun safety laws, like California, have actually decreased over the past two decades. Meanwhile, in States with the weakest gun safety laws, gun suicide rates have increased by almost 40 percent. They have gone down in States with constitutionally, legal, evidence-based research gun violence protection laws, but they have gone up by 40 percent in those States with the weakest.

If all U.S. States had experienced the same trend in their gun suicide rate as the eight States with the strongest gun safety laws, approximately 72,000 fewer people would have died from gun suicides.

The gun lobbyists often counter this evidence in the debate to say: Oh, well these people would just have tried something else. Not surprisingly, they are lying. They are lying about people taking their own lives with their product.

Research has repeatedly shown that States that have experienced a decline in gun suicides, have not seen a corresponding increase in suicides using other methods. The other methods most commonly used for suicide are actually vastly slower, research tells us, than by the availability of guns and the use of guns.

Mr. Speaker, to honor those who have lost their lives by taking their lives and to protect the most vulnerable, we need to follow the evidence and enact national commonsense, proven reforms because where you live should not determine the probability of losing a loved one to gun suicide.

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