Authorizing the Limited and Specified Use of the United States Armed Forces Against Syria

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, almost all of this week on the floor of the Senate will be dedicated to one of the most serious, if not the most serious, matters this body ever considers--that of war and peace and the question of whether we engage American military assets in conflicts across the globe. I am sure I will be back to the floor later this week to speak on that weighty matter. I appreciate the very passionate remarks of the Senator from Illinois on this subject.

Almost every week over the last several months when the Senate has been in session, I have come to the floor to talk about another subject of life-and-death consequence; that is, the growing number of individuals across this country who have been killed by guns. We are going to debate life and death on the Senate floor this week as we try to figure out what the course of American intervention may or may not be in a place on the other side of the Earth in which far too many innocent people, little babies and adults alike, are being killed. We also need to debate what we are going to do to prevent the fact that babies and teenagers and adults right here in the United States of America are being killed. So I have brought this poster down--or a variant of it--a couple of times a month every single month since about April of this year, and it shows a number. The number is a pretty simple number. It represents the number of people in the United States who have been killed by guns since December 14.

As we get further away from that date, maybe people forget what it is, but in Connecticut we will never, ever forget what that date means. December 14 is the date on which 20 little 6- and 7-year-old boys and girls were killed inside Sandy Hook Elementary School, along with 6 teachers and professionals who protected them, as well as the gunman and his mother. Twenty-eight people in all were killed that day. It has lit a spark under the American consciousness about this issue, which has frankly been lingering for far too long.

Twenty-eight people died in Newtown on December 14, but every day across this country, on average, 30 people die due to homicide from guns. So I am back here today to try to tell the stories of just a handful of the 7,907 people who have been killed at the hands of gun violence since December 14. When I started back in April, I think this number was somewhere around 4,000. It has marched upward and almost doubled since then.

This has been a really bad summer in Connecticut. For instance, in places such as New Haven and Hartford and Bridgeport, we thought we were making some real progress when it came to the number of homicides by guns. This summer, unfortunately, we saw far too many, people such as Devaante Jackson, 18 years old, who was killed on August 15 of this year in New Haven. He was killed in a driveby shooting while simply standing on a sidewalk just after 8 o'clock on the evening of August 15. A friend of Devaante's said:

I don't understand why somebody would do this to him. He's real good. I never knew he had any problems with anybody because he always (got) along with everybody.

Another friend said:

He wasn't a bad kid; he was just in the wrong spot at the wrong time ..... everybody should know ..... stop the violence, put the guns down.

A few days later in Hartford, at the same nightclub, in two separate incidents, two young men--Miguel Delgado, age 21, and Brian Simpe, age 19--were killed. Disputes started in the nightclub and spilled out onto the streets of Hartford--two different disputes, two different incidents, and both of these boys were killed.

Brian was 19 years old. He graduated from Manchester High School and attended Manchester Community College. He worked at ShopRite in order to make enough money to go to community college. He wanted to start his own business. He was a kid who wanted to do something great with his life. Before he headed out that night, he tweeted, ``Just another summer night out.'' Unfortunately, in places such as Hartford and New Haven and Bridgeport and Baltimore and Chicago and Los Angeles, this is just another summer night out. Too many people are being killed simply as a result of common disputes, this time happening in a nightclub in Hartford.

Domestic violence, as we know, unfortunately, often leads to tragic homicidal incidents. Janice Lesco, from Coventry, CT, died on August 24--just a few weeks ago--from a gunshot wound to the chest. Her husband, who shot her, then committed suicide. Her husband had a well-documented and decade-long history of threats and abuse. Ms. Lesco was a mother and a grandmother. She had lived in Coventry for most of her life.

Luckily, in Connecticut we have an agreement that people who have a history of domestic violence shouldn't get their hands on a gun, but they can if they walk into a gun show or if they buy their gun on the Internet. We can't simply make the decision here that if a person buys a gun online or a person buys a gun at a gun show, they should be stopped from doing so if they have a history of domestic violence.

Frankly, I was struck by this one newspaper article describing one night in New Haven. This is even earlier--on August 11, 2013. It starts by talking about Torrance Dawkins, a 22-year-old Waterbury man who was celebrating his birthday in a New Haven nightclub when he was shot and killed at about 1:30 on August 11.

The article goes on and sort of casually says that later that day New Haven police responded to more gun violence. A local rapper was putting up sheets on an upcoming concert he was going to be holding in town, and he suffered a single gunshot wound to his neck. Davon Goodwin, who was 18 years old, was later that day shot in the thigh on Hamilton Street. And just before 5 p.m. that day, police were called to an area near Dixwell Avenue and found out that Jermaine Adams, 41, had received a gunshot wound to his face. Those last three people miraculously survived. But we can see how casual gun violence can be on a summer Sunday in New Haven, CT. One young man died as a consequence of a dispute at a nightclub, and three other people luckily survived who were shot later in the day.

Every single day in this country--in the United States of America--30 people are dying due to gun violence. Almost 8,000 people have died since the tragedy in Sandy Hook, and this body has done nothing to stop it. We have had commonsense legislation before this Senate that would just say: You know what. If you have a criminal history, you should not be able to buy a gun, no matter where you buy it--at a gun show, from a gun dealer, online.

We have had commonsense bipartisan legislation on the floor saying: You know what. It should be a crime to buy a whole mess-load of guns from a gun store and then go out and intentionally sell them to criminals. We cannot get that passed either.

We even tried to just say: Let's beef up our mental health system to make sure people who have serious mental illnesses get the treatment they need so they do not resort to violence--the very few who do. That was part of the bill we could not get passed.

So I am going to continue to come down to the floor to give voices to these victims, to talk about the real people, the stories behind the dozens of people who are killed every day by guns and the 8,000 people who have been killed since Sandy Hook. We are going to make an important decision this week about whether we are going to commit military assets to the Middle East, and maybe that debate will stretch into next week and the week after. But we should not forget that while people are dying overseas, people are dying due to gun violence right here in the United States, and before it is too late--before another 8,000 people die from guns in this country--we should do something about it.
I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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