Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act--Motion to Proceed--

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this Saturday marks a solemn anniversary in Colorado--the solemn anniversary of a moment that shattered our children's sense of safety and has forever scarred our Nation's memory.

It has been 25 years this week since the Columbine High School shooting, where 12 students and a teacher were murdered and many others were left with life-altering injuries. None of us left without the impact of that day.

Columbine changed our State forever. I think it changed the country forever. We all remember where we were the day it happened. I certainly do. We remember the lives that were lost on April 20, 1999. Twelve young Coloradans never had the chance to graduate from high school, go to college, get married, start a family.

Rachel Scott was killed when she was eating lunch outside with a friend. She was planning on going on a mission trip to Botswana and dreamed of becoming an actress. She was 17 years old.

Danny Rohrbough was 15. Every year, Danny saved the money he earned from working at his family's wheat farm in the summer to buy Christmas presents for his friends and family--just another American kid gunned down on his way to lunch, still holding the Dr. Pepper he had bought from the vending machine.

Kyle Velasquez, age 16, was a new student at Columbine. He had developmental disabilities, and he had just started attending school for a full day. He would have been on his way home from school if the shooting had happened just a week earlier than it did.

The youngest victim, Steven Curnow, was only 14 years old. He dreamt at that young age of becoming a Navy pilot.

Cassie Bernall, 17, was a new student at Columbine. After a few tough years of high school, she was finally thriving and excited for what was next.

Isaiah Shoels, 18 years old, was a senior about ready to graduate. He had overcome a heart defect to play football and wrestle in high school.

Matthew Kechter, a straight-A student and also a football player, was remembered by his parents as a wonderful role model for his younger siblings. He was just 16.

Lauren Townsend was 18 and was the captain of the volleyball team. She loved to volunteer at the local animal shelter.

John Tomlin was killed. He was 17. He was in the library at Columbine, where he was trying to comfort other students.

Kelly Fleming was 16. She was also a new student at Columbine. She loved to write poetry.

Daniel Mauser was 15 years old. He was a Boy Scout and a piano player who had just mustered the courage to join the school's debate team.

Corey DePooter, 17, was described as an all-American kid who worked hard in school and was someone his classmates loved to be around.

Those were the students who died that day. And we can't ever forget Dave Sanders and the contribution he made--a teacher, a father, and a grandfather. He was a hero that day. He saved 100 students in danger before he was killed.

Twelve kids in the prime of their lives were gunned down by killers who used the gun show loophole to purchase weapons they should never have owned.

Mr. President, the shooting at Columbine High School, as I have said over and over and over again on this floor, happened the same year that my oldest daughter, Caroline, was born. She is turning 25 this year. She and her sisters and an entire generation of American children-- maybe two generations, really--have grown up in the shadow of Columbine--really the first of these types of school shootings--and the shadow of gun violence more broadly.

Since Columbine, my State--every State--but my State has endured one tragedy after another, one horrific murder after another. In 2012, a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, CO. In 2019, a shooter injured eight students at STEM High School in Highlands Ranch. In March 2021, a shooter killed 10 people at the King Soopers in Boulder. Two months after that King Soopers shooting, a gunman killed six people at a birthday party in Colorado Springs. Just over a year ago, a shooter killed five people at Club Q, an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs that had been a refuge to so many people.

``Columbine'' really is, I think, a word that is etched into America's history and America's consciousness as the start of this sickness. Columbine is so much more than that as well. There are kids in high school there this week. It is a place people still want to go. It is a place where people who were teaching there 25 years ago still want to teach.

But I think for a lot of America--certainly for me--there is sort of a ``before Columbine'' and there is an ``after Columbine.'' There is a moment when something like that happened for the first time in America, and we couldn't believe it. It was so out of kilter with our experience as Americans. Now we have had not just the shootings that I recorded in Colorado and that I have come to this floor to talk about over the years but so many others all across the United States of America.

Nobody has carried this burden more than our children, the generation of the people who are the pages on the floor here today in the Senate. They are a generation of metal detectors, of active-shooter drills and bulletproof backpacks. They live under constant threat of being next.

Anybody who has raised children over the last 25 years in this country knows what it looks like when there is a report of another one of these shootings, and you are sitting there on the couch with your son or your daughter, seeing them sink a little deeper into that couch or sitting up a little closer, a little more nervous, a little more worried that you are going to be next.

I wish we could say that in marking this 25th anniversary and thinking about the contributions people have made in the Columbine community, both in Colorado and across the country, to help comfort victims of similar school shootings, to provide leadership that doesn't have anything to do with the shooting that happened at Columbine except to know that they had another chance to be able to make a contribution to their society--and we are grateful for that contribution.

I wish I could stand here and say: Well, over the last 25 years, we had addressed this issue. We were paying attention to the concerns of this generation that has grown up in the shadow of Columbine.

I wish I could say that, but I can't say that. What I can report to you today, standing here, is that guns are the leading cause of death of children in America--uniquely in America. In no other country in the industrialized world--no other country in the world--is that true. And it wasn't true when Columbine happened 25 years ago. Twenty-five years ago, car accidents were the leading cause of death for children. I can come here and report to you that since then, car accidents--car deaths and car accidents--among kids over that period of time have decreased by 50 percent in this country. We cut it in half. Drunk driving deaths are down 60 percent in America since Columbine happened. Child cancer deaths in the United States of America are down a quarter since then.

Congress has passed countless laws that have made our roads and our cars safer. We have passed historic legislation to reduce drunk-driving fatalities. We have appropriated billions of dollars for cancer research. Well, that is good. That is all good.

But in the last 25 years, the number of kids that have died by guns in America has increased by 68 percent. If you take all of the people in this world who die by gun violence--at least in the industrialized world--that are age 4 and younger, 95 percent of the people that die from guns die in the United States of America, and 3 percent die somewhere else.

There is no other country, as I said, in the industrialized world where gun violence is the leading cause of death of children, only here in the United States. There is no other country in the world where kids sit there on the couch watching television, seeing another one of these events and wondering, as our children have for the last 25 years, whether they are going to be next.

You know, one of the really staggering things about that statistic, about the gun death being the leading cause of death among kids, when I first heard it, I thought to myself, that must be accidents of some kind or another. That must be people being careless with firearms, leaving them someplace, or kids being careless with firearms.

Only 5 percent of those gun deaths are accidents, and 65 percent are violent actions between a person and that child, while 30 percent have been deemed suicides. So 95 percent of them are, in effect, acts of violence of one kind or another, and 5 percent are accidents.

It is hard for me to imagine that any other ratio like that would be something where we didn't feel like we had a moral obligation to address it, a moral obligation to fix it.

I know that young people who are here today feel that we have abandoned them. I know they know this is a disgrace; that it is an indictment of our Nation; that it is an indictment of their prospects; that it is incomprehensible to them and to my daughters that we have nearly 200 times the rate of violent gun deaths as Japan has or as South Korea has and nearly 100 times the United Kingdom.

I wish I could stand here 25 years after Columbine and tell you that we have addressed this. But matters are much, much worse than they were 25 years ago, certainly from the perspective of our kids.

But we can't stop; we can't give up; we can't stop trying--because it is a disgrace; because it is an indictment; because it calls into question what it means to live in a nation that is committed to the rule of law, in a nation that is committed to the public safety and the safety of our citizens.

I see the Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy, and I, who have had many conversations about this over the years. No one has led more on this question in the Senate than Chris because of what happened in Newtown and what has happened throughout the United States. And I am grateful for that.

I am grateful for Daniel Mauser's dad Tom, who I saw again this week, having been fortunate to speak with him many times over the years. If he were alive today, Daniel, his son, would be 40 this year. And to this day--yesterday, I think it was, maybe the day before--when he comes to Congress, Tom wears the same sneakers that Daniel had on the day he was killed at Columbine.

And Tom has never, never given up. He has fought tirelessly to build safer schools, to argue for stronger gun laws, to raise awareness around gun violence protection--just like the families from Newtown who sat up in that balcony over there and saw the catastrophic failure on this floor that night; just like the kids from Parkland, who came to Congress over and over again in an effort to say: We don't want one more kid in this country to be killed this way. We don't want one more life to be cut short. We are tired of living in a country that doesn't seem to care for us. We are tired of accepting odds that no other kid in America or no other kid in the world has to accept for themselves.

Tom told me that he comes to Congress less and less these days because there are a lot of other ``me's'' out there now. There are so many other people that have had the same experience that Tom Mauser and his family have had. But I will bet if he thought there was a chance, he would be back here, and even if he thought there wasn't a chance. And he has made a huge difference in Colorado.

And I am not singling him out either. I mean, many people who have been through this in the State have raised their voices to be able to accomplish the things that we have been able to do. But I think he set such an incredible example for the rest of us, for anybody here who thinks that we should just give up.

Just 10 days after his son was murdered, he was protesting the NRA's annual convention, which was in Denver, CO, that year. And Tom has been a fixture in the State capitol in Colorado where, because of him and because of other advocates across the State, as a western State, which has a long tradition of Second Amendment rights, we have been able to enact one piece of sensible gun legislation after another--while Congress has failed, failed, failed, failed.

After the massacre at Columbine, we closed the gun show loophole. After the tragedy in Aurora, we strengthened background checks and limited the size of magazines.

In the wake of the shooting at Club Q, we raised the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21. If Colorado can pass laws like that, there is no excuse for this place. And Colorado needs this place to pass laws like the laws we passed in Colorado.

What sense is there to have--I mean, it makes sense to have background checks in Colorado, but think about how much better it would be if we had background checks that covered the entire country.

How much sense it would be if we limited the size of magazines the way we have in Colorado, if we banned these weapons of war. I am telling you young pages who are here, I guarantee you we are going to do that someday. I guarantee you that we are going to do that someday, and among many surprises that we have as a society when we look back from there, when we look back from that future, this is going to be one where we say to ourselves, What in the world were we thinking with these weapons of war on our streets and in our classrooms in this country?

What were we thinking when there were people here saying that that was just the price of freedom?

So I think we can do this. I hope it is not going to take another 25 years. In fact, I don't think it is going to take another 25 years. And I think it is because your generation is out of patience with us on this issue. I think your generation is out of excuses or thinks we are out of excuses and lame explanations. And like so many other things, you know that there is an answer here and that the State--as I say, like Colorado can do it, we can do it. And I have met with so many people now over the years who have said: In that instant, my life changed forever; our family's life changed forever; we never thought it could happen to us; I never thought I was saying goodbye that morning for the last time.

And 25 years ago on that April day, our entire country was changed forever. But we haven't changed it for the better.

And there isn't anybody else on planet Earth who can do it except for the people who occupy these desks and the desks down the hall in the House of Representatives.

So as we pay tribute, and I hope we all will, to the 13 lives that were taken too soon at Columbine, we need to rededicate ourselves to freeing every American, and especially our children, from the threat of gun violence. And I would say to this next generation too: I hope you will take inspiration from the work of Tom Mauser and the work of the kids at Parkland and the moms who wear those red shirts demanding that this country get better and people all over this country who are acting out of the memories of their loved ones, not for the sake of their loved ones who are gone but for the idea, for the sake of the idea that it should never happen again. That is what people say.

I am always amazed when people come here to Congress when there is so much cynicism that is well-earned about this place, and yet they will come here and they will advocate on behalf of their kids, kids who have died of fatal diseases, advocating for research that we can put those diseases in the rearview mirror, and the strength it takes for somebody to come here who has lost a child under those circumstances. I always say that I am so grateful that you came. I am so grateful you came because there are a lot of people who can't come here who are in the same circumstance that you are in. Thank God you are here having this conversation.

But it is almost impossible to imagine the strength that it takes to come here and lobby this body on the subject of gun violence when you have lost a loved one in America, when you know that, as the years have gone by, matters have gotten worse. We have become the leading--where gun deaths have become the leading cause of death of children in this country as opposed to any other, and you still come.

And so I say to the young people who are here today and to the young people all over America: You can't give up. Our hope is in you and we have to deliver and we will put the scourge of gun violence behind us. I know we will.

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