February 14, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 29 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S1354-S1355]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        VICTIMS OF GUN VIOLENCE

  Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Presiding Officer.
  Mr. President, from time to time, I come to the floor of the Senate 
to share with my colleagues stories of the victims of gun violence. I 
had hoped the statistics that consistently show this country has a gun 
violence rate that is 10 to 20 times higher than those of other similar 
high-income nations--data that shows this continuing epidemic of mass 
slaughter during which we average a mass shooting almost every day--
would have compelled my colleagues to action. It hasn't. So I have 
tried to come down to the floor as often as I can to explain who these 
people are and to explain the genius that has been lost from this world 
when lives are cut so short by gun violence--gun violence that is 
largely preventable in this country.
  I come to the floor with an unusually heavy heart because I want to 
talk about some of the lives that were lost a year ago today at the 
shooting in Parkland, FL, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It 
was a year ago that I was actually walking to the floor to give a 
speech on immigration when I learned of another mass shooting. It hits 
hard for those of us who represent Connecticut because we are still 
working through the ripples of grief that never ever disappear in a 
community that has been shattered by an episode of catastrophic gun 
violence--in our case, in Sandy Hook, CT.
  In February of last year, 17 students and teachers were gunned down 
in their classrooms at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. One of 
them was Peter Wang.
  Peter was 15 years old. He was a U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' 
Training Corps cadet. He was getting ready to celebrate the Chinese New 
Year with his family. His two younger siblings and many other friends 
called him a natural leader.
  When the shooter entered the high school, Peter had a choice to make: 
He could run and protect himself or he could try to help his fellow 
students in need. He chose the latter. He chose to hold a door open to 
help his classmates escape. He saved other people's lives while he lost 
his own.
  Classmate Jared Burns said: ``For as long as we remember him, he is a 
hero.''

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  ``He yanked open a door that allowed dozens of classmates, teachers 
and staffers to escape,'' officials said.
  His middle school basketball coach said that he was just a ``joyful 
person.'' His sacrifice, according to his coach, ``just made perfect 
sense'' because he was that selfless.
  Peter was posthumously accepted to the U.S. Military Academy at West 
Point for his heroic actions on that day.
  Alex Schachter was a freshman who played the trombone and baritone in 
the marching band, and he loved to play basketball. He loved music so 
much that in middle school, he took two band classes so that he could 
get ready to join the marching band in high school, which was his 
dream. His Eagle Regiment Marching Band actually won the State 
championship in Tampa.
  His dad said that he was just a sweetheart of a kid. He said that he 
just wanted to do well to make his parents' happy.
  His dream was to attend the University of Connecticut. He told 
everybody. He was only a freshman, but he knew where he was going to 
college. He wanted to go to my State, to Connecticut. He wore a UConn 
sweatshirt almost every single day to school. His favorite song was an 
old one by Chicago, ``25 or 6 to 4,'' which is kind of an odd choice 
for a 14-year-old. Yet UConn's band actually chose to play that song at 
halftime at one of UConn's football games, and UConn admitted Alex 
posthumously because his dream was to be a UConn Husky.
  Helena Ramsay was full of laughter and had this infectious smile. She 
was 17 when she was shot that day. She loved all kinds of music, 
although she was mostly into K-pop. She had all sorts of other 
interests too. She was interested in human rights and the environment. 
She joined the school's United Nations Club and the Christian faith-
based First Priority Group. She was always looking out for her friends.
  One of her friends said: ``When I was stressed out from my chemistry 
lab that I thought I was going to fail, she calmed me down and told me 
that it was going to be OK.''
  One of her best friends said that she was ``one of the kindest people 
I've ever met.''
  When the gunman walked into her classroom, she turned to her friend 
to make sure that her friend was safe and told her to shield herself 
with books. People described it as a ``moment of bravery in the face of 
horror.''
  Another hero that day was Aaron Feis. He was an assistant football 
coach, and he was a security guard. He threw himself in front of his 
kids. That is how he died that day.
  The football program's spokesperson said:

       [Aaron] died the same way he lived--he put himself second. 
     . . . He was a very kind soul, a very nice man. He died a 
     hero.

  One of his football players who had been going through leukemia 
treatments remembered that Aaron had guided him through those 
treatments.

       He would send me prayers. He would send me Bible scripts 
     and just stuff to cheer up my day.

  Aaron died while protecting the kids at that school.
  These 4 stories are amongst those of the 17 people who died at 
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Yet 93 people die every day from 
gun violence. Most of those are suicides. A bunch of them are 
homicides. Others are accidental shootings, but they are all 
preventable.
  As we remember today the mass shooting at Parkland, it is important 
that even on those days on which nobody puts up on cable news a mass 
shooting, there are still somewhere around 90 people who die every day, 
and I will tell you about one of them.
  Corey Dodd was 25 years old when he died last month in Baltimore, MD. 
That morning, he told Marissa, his wife, to stay home and rest with 
their 3-year-old and their 3-week-old while he took the 5-year-old 
twins to school. After he dropped the twins off at school and pulled up 
outside their home, he was shot to death. The 3-year-old was inside. 
Marissa had to tell her kids that Daddy wasn't coming home.
  She said:

       I've told the kids that Daddy is done. He's not coming 
     back.

  Their family was planning to move because Corey was looking for work, 
and they were going to move to wherever he found work. He had recently 
finished a program to earn his commercial driver's license. Things were 
looking up for Corey and Marissa and their four kids.
  I didn't know Corey, but I know something about his death because I 
happened to be in Baltimore on that day. I happened to be at Corey's 
kids' school at the moment he was shot. I was inside that school when 
an announcement came over the loud speaker that there was a code green. 
I didn't know what a code green meant. A few minutes later, I found out 
that it is what happens inside schools in Baltimore when there is a 
shooting in the neighborhood. They locked down the school and our 
classroom and pulled down the shades, and we turned off the lights. A 
few minutes later, the police notified us that the scene was clear, 
that the school was safe, and that the day could go on. Yet, 
unbeknownst to me, just down the hall from me inside that school were 
two twins whose father had been shot blocks away from that school. 
Their lives will never be the same.
  Part of the reason we care so much about this epidemic is that it is 
not just the victims; it is also about the people who are left behind. 
Imagine going to an elementary school in which you fear for your life 
when you walk to and from school and where parents of your friends are 
shot at 10:30 in the morning. It changes their brains, the trauma these 
kids go through in a school like that. It makes their little, tiny, 
developing brains unable to learn. There is a biological process that 
actually happens to these kids. That trauma is what Parkland has been 
going through for the last year, and that trauma is what kids in 
Baltimore, New Haven, Hartford, Chicago, and New Orleans go through 
every single day. We are ruining millions of children all across this 
country because of an epidemic that we could choose to solve, that we 
could choose to do something about.
  This week, the House of Representatives had a hearing and a meeting 
to move forward with a universal background checks bill that is 
supported by 97 percent of Americans. It will pass the House of 
Representatives, with Republican and Democratic support, with flying 
colors. Do you know what that tells us? It tells us that the most 
important thing we could do to save lives, to cut down on the 93 people 
who are killed every day, is to pass that universal background checks 
bill. In States that have universal background checks, there is about 
30 percent less gun crime and fewer gun homicides than in States that 
don't have those universal background checks.
  As we remember 1 year since the massacre at Parkland and as we strive 
to understand that this is an epidemic that takes 90 people every day, 
know that it is within our power to do something about it. We can't 
eliminate every single gun death. We can't stop every suicide or every 
homicide, but with commonsense legislation that is supported by 97 
percent of Americans, we can make a big difference, and we can send a 
signal to would-be shooters who are contemplating violence that they 
should not interpret our silence as a quiet endorsement. It is up to 
us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.

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