September 9, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 143 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Page H7539]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR EXCUSES

  (Ms. SCANLON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, last week, students across my district, PA-
5, and across the country celebrated the start of the 2019-2020 school 
year. Students returned mostly eager to learn and teachers ready to 
teach; but in my district and others, too many desks had empty chairs.
  As we were high-fiving students at a Chester elementary school, a 
school administrator turned to me and mentioned that one of the second 
graders wasn't there. She was lying in a bed at Philadelphia's 
Children's Hospital recovering from a gunshot wound that she suffered 
while sitting in her grandfather's car outside a grocery store the week 
before.
  ``I don't know how much more of this I can take,'' he said to me.
  Like many of us, this dedicated educator was visibly worn down by the 
daily scourge of gun violence, the funerals he has attended for 
children, for children whose lives have been cut short before they 
could even begin or who have been forever scarred and limited by the 
trauma they have experienced or witnessed.
  We do not have time for excuses. We need our colleagues in the Senate 
to act.
  There is no one solution to ending gun violence in our country. We 
need to implement an array of commonsense, research-based solutions, 
but the first step must be a will to act.

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