[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 176 (Tuesday, October 31, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6891-S6893]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Gun Violence

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, last week, we voted on a judge who felt it 
necessary to sign up for a lifetime membership with a political 
organization in order to get his nomination forwarded back before this 
body.
  The judge we voted on last week became a lifetime member of the NRA 
in between his appointment by President Obama and, then, his 
appointment by President Trump--a signal, apparently, to the new 
Republican White House that he would align with their interests and 
views on issues related to the regulation of firearms in this country.
  We are going to see a parade of very interesting choices for the 
Federal judiciary come through this body, and they are going to be 
moved in rapid succession, as they are this week. I have been told that 
never before have we taken four votes on appellate nominees in a single 
week. Of course, that stands in contrast with the Republican Senate 
that refused to give even a hearing to one Supreme Court Justice over 
the entirety of 2016. I think it is worth noting that this body can 
move fast when it wants to, and yet we watched a Supreme Court seat be 
stolen by this Senate from a Democratic President who, by 
constitutional right, had the ability to make that appointment.
  I bring up the lifetime membership in the NRA because it is 
increasingly clear that you have to signal a level of extremism on 
issues like firearms in order to get your name brought before this 
body. That signal is wildly out of step with where the American public 
is on many of these issues.
  I have come to the floor over the course of the last 4 years every 
few weeks in order to talk about the fact that there is no other 
country in the world where 80 to 90 people every single day die from 
guns. The numbers are just absolutely stunning. Some 2,800 people a 
month die from guns, and 33,000 a year. The majority of those are 
suicides, but there are record numbers of homicides and accidental 
shootings in this country. Americans by and large don't accept this 
rate of slaughter. Americans want us to change our laws, and they don't 
want a judiciary that is going to stand in the way of Congress's 
ability to follow the wishes of our constituents.
  I have been coming down to the floor to tell the story of the 
victims. My hope is that, although the data hasn't moved this 
Congress--90 percent of Americans want stronger gun laws--the data 
incontrovertibly shows that in places that have universal background 
checks or laws requiring you to get local permits before you buy a gun, 
there are less gun crimes.
  Maybe if the data doesn't move my colleagues, the story of the 
victims will. Deon Rodney was shot on October 14 of this year, just a 
few weeks ago. He was working at Just Right Cutz, where he was a 
barber, in Bridgeport, CT. He was the 22nd homicide victim in 
Bridgeport this year.
  He had just finished cutting a young boy's hair in a chair when a 
masked gunman chased somebody else into the barbershop. Police said 
Deon was protecting the young boy, shielding the young boy from this 
intruder who came running in. He jumped out of his chair to try to get 
in between the boy sitting in the barber's chair and the gunman, and 
the gunman shot him.
  The owner of the barber shop said:

       Deon had just finished his haircut and the boy was getting 
     ready to go outside when the gunman came in. He saved 
     everyone in the barbershop.

  Deon was 31 years old. He left behind his wife, his mother, plenty of 
other family members, and an 8-year-old daughter.
  Speaking about their daughter, Deon's wife said:

       He loved her endlessly, unconditionally.

  His mother said:

       Deon is a part of me. He was my son, but he was also my 
     friend.

  His cousin said:

       I know that everyone is recognizing his heroism now, but he 
     was always like this. Always a role model and always willing 
     to give. Always willing to go out of his way to help a 
     stranger. Nothing has changed all these years. I guess I'm 
     glad that the masses can now see this.

  The owner of the barbershop went on to say of Deon:

       He's dead because of these people running around with guns.

  There are guns everywhere you look in cities like Bridgeport, New 
Haven, Hartford, New York or Chicago. People say: Why is that? Why are 
there all these guns--many of them, if not most of them, illegal guns--
if you have strong gun laws in places like New York, Illinois, and 
Connecticut? The reason is that gun trafficking doesn't recognize State 
boundaries, and the guns used to commit crimes in places like 
Connecticut come from outside of Connecticut.
  A comprehensive, groundbreaking survey of gun crimes in New York City 
found that 75 percent of the guns that are used to commit crimes in New 
York City come from outside of New York State. They come from States 
with looser gun laws, where you as a criminal can easily buy a gun 
without having to prove you are a responsible gun owner.
  How do all these illegal guns get into Bridgeport such that somebody 
can turn a corner and walk into a barbershop with a weapon in their 
hand? It is because criminals with criminal records go into gun shows 
in States that don't require background checks at those forums, buy up 
dozens of weapons, load them into their cars, and then drive up to 
States with tougher gun laws and sell them on the black market.
  Congress willingly allows this to happen because we have not moved 
our mandatory system of background checks to the places in which gun 
purchases are made today. Data is a little bit hard to pin down, but 
anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of gun sales today don't involve a 
background check. You can understand why. Sales have migrated to 
online. They have migrated to gun shows. They have gone to places where 
background checks aren't required.
  I mentioned what the data tells us when it comes to background 
checks. The data tells us background checks save lives. Here is one 
slice of the data. In States that have universal background check laws, 
47 percent fewer women get shot by an intimate partner than States 
without universal background check laws. That is because, in the heat 
of passion, domestic abusers often go to get a weapon and use it to 
perpetuate a domestic violence crime. You can't do that if you have a 
domestic violence history in a State with a universal background check 
law because wherever you go, you are going to be prohibited from buying 
that weapon.
  Since November of 1998, more than 2.4 million gun sales to prohibited 
purchasers have been prevented because of background checks; 2\1/2\ 
million people who were criminals or who were addicts or who were 
seriously mentally ill were stopped from buying guns because of our 
background check laws. Because we now have at least one-quarter of all 
sales happening without background checks, that means there are 
hundreds of thousands of criminals,

[[Page S6892]]

hundreds of thousands of people with serious mental illness who are 
able to buy guns. It is not surprising that 90 percent of Americans, 90 
percent of gun owners, 90 percent of Democrats, and 90 percent of 
Republicans support expanded background checks.
  I would argue there is not another issue out there in American 
politics today that enjoys 90 percent support amongst Republicans and 
Democrats. Senator Durbin corrected me the other day and said the 
latest survey states that the number is actually 94 percent support 
from Republicans and Democrats. The only slice of the American 
electorate that you can get under 90 percent support of background 
checks is NRA members. NRA members support universal background checks 
at a 75-percent clip. Background checks save lives, they are supported 
by the vast majority of the American public, and yet we can't get it 
done.
  This month, I, along with a couple dozen cosponsors, introduced a new 
version of legislation allowing for background checks to occur in every 
commercial sale that is conducted in this country, with commonsense 
exceptions, making sure that when you are gifting a firearm to a family 
member or you are loaning a gun to a friend who wants to take it to go 
hunting, you don't have to conduct a background check under those 
circumstances, but if it is a traditional arm's-length sale, then you 
have to go through a process, which normally takes 10 minutes in order 
to prove you are not a criminal. Again, this proposal is supported by 
90 percent of Americans. It is time we recognize that it is directly 
connected to this epidemic of gun violence that plagues the country.
  Let me close by making another argument to you. I know a lot of my 
Republican friends talk a lot on this floor and on the cable news shows 
about the threat of terrorism to this country. When the terrorists 
decided to use planes as their weapon of choice to attack our country, 
we changed the way our law protects us from attacks by airplanes. We 
made sure we screened individuals before they got on these planes to 
make sure they don't have weapons or bomb-making material that could 
ultimately threaten the rest of us. We now all take off our shoes every 
time we get on an airplane because we recognized that we needed to 
change our laws to understand that these planes were being used to 
attack American citizens.
  These terrorist groups have recognized that it is now pretty hard to 
get somebody with a weapon or an explosive device on a plane so they 
are now directing would-be attackers to a different forum. An issue of 
Rumiyah, which is Isis's propaganda magazine, encouraged recruits in 
the United States to take advantage of our loose gun laws. It 
specifically told people go to gun shows where you will not have to 
present identification or submit to background checks in order to buy 
military-style weapons that you can use to kill dozens of Americans. 
ISIS and al-Qaida are telling their potential recruits in the United 
States to go to gun shows so they don't have to submit themselves to a 
background check and so there is no paper trail of the gun they are 
buying in order to kill Americans.
  Why wouldn't we adjust our laws to recognize that the new weapon of 
choice of terrorists is not an airplane, but it is today a tactical 
weapon bought outside of the background check system. I have a million 
more reasons why we should do what 90 percent of the American people 
want, and someday maybe we will get there.
  So 33,000 people a year, 2,800 a month, 93 a day--that is a rate of 
gun violence that is not twice that of other industrialized nations. It 
is not 5 times, it is not 10 times, it is 20 times higher than the rate 
of gun violence in other industrialized countries in this world. It is 
not because we have more people who are mentally ill, and it is not 
because we spend less money on law enforcement. It is, by and large, 
because we have a set of gun laws that allow for illegal guns, 
dangerous weapons to flow into the hands of very dangerous people.
  I hope my Republican colleagues will take a look at the new 
background checks legislation I have introduced with many of my 
colleagues, and we can finally get to a place that 90 percent of our 
constituents want us to be.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, just last week, the Republican-controlled 
Congress rammed through a budget with the sole purpose of allowing 
Republicans to enact a tax plan that would take money from working 
Americans and put it into the pockets of giant corporations and wealthy 
individuals. The following week they killed an important rule that 
would have made it easier for Americans to hold big banks and 
corporations accountable when they lie, cheat, and steal from working 
families.
  There have been countless stories of the Trump administration in 
disarray--juicy rumors of distrust and division between and among 
congressional Republicans and the White House, reports of Republicans' 
inability to advance key parts of their agenda, but that is only half 
the story. The other terrifying half is this. Since day one of this 
administration, President Trump and congressional Republicans have been 
working hard to make government work better and better for the rich and 
the powerful. While they have fumbled on their legislative agenda, they 
have been quietly working to help powerful interests capture our 
courts.
  That shouldn't come as a surprise. For decades, those powerful 
interests have poured eye-popping amounts of cash into electing 
politicians who will promote their interests in Washington. They have 
hand-picked politicians who will enact laws that will make it easier 
for corporations to abuse their workers or cheat their customers or 
make an extra buck and make it harder for agencies to hold them 
accountable for wrongdoing. They have executed a well-funded campaign 
to rig the rules of the game so the powerful always come out on top and 
the people come out on the bottom, and they know the courts are the 
place where they can shape the law for decades to come.
  Most Americans already know that while we have one set of laws on the 
books, we really have two different judicial systems. One justice 
system is for the rich and the powerful. In that system, government 
officials fret about being too tough on white-collar crime so wealthy 
individuals or giant corporations that break the law walk away with a 
small fine and a pinkie promise not to do it again, and when those 
executives break that promise, they get 2nd, 3rd, and 23rd chances. 
Every time they get caught, the cycle repeats. The corporation pays the 
fine, says some magic words, and everyone goes right back to breaking 
the law.
  The second justice system is for everyone else. In that system, tough 
on crime is the name of the game. People are locked up long before they 
go to trial because they don't have the money for bail. Individuals who 
commit minor, nonviolent offenses are slapped with long prison 
sentences, and even after they serve those sentences and are released, 
they are branded with a scarlet letter that creates barriers to 
employment, to housing, and to opportunity. That second justice system 
even traps families, children, and elderly parents whose families are 
blown apart and whose communities are destroyed.
  That second justice system has earned America the dubious title of 
holding the world's highest incarceration rate. Despite having less 
than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States holds more 
than 20 percent of the world's incarcerated population. Russia, China, 
and North Korea don't even come close--not only in raw numbers but in 
the percentage of their population behind bars. America's legal system 
is great at locking people up but terrible at doing what it is supposed 
to do, dispensing equal justice under law.
  Those words--``Equal Justice Under Law''--are etched into the front 
of the Supreme Court. If we truly believe those words, we need to start 
making some changes, and in recent years, we have seen some progress. 
Some State and local governments have made real efforts to reduce crime 
and lower incarceration rates. Massachusetts is one of the States 
leading the way with elected officials in both parties debating 
transformative changes to the judicial system aimed at replacing this 
tough-on-crime policy with smart-on-crime policies. The call for reform 
also extends to corporate crime. Public outrage at corporate greed has 
created

[[Page S6893]]

pressure to hold the rich and the powerful a little more accountable, 
but President Trump is committed to reversing that trend. He is working 
hand in hand with this Republican Congress to ensure that the rich get 
to play by their own set of rules while everyone else gets crushed 
under the awesome power of law enforcement.
  This week will be a big step forward for the two-part justice system 
as this Senate prepares to hand lifetime appointments to four judges 
whose careers make it clear that they have no interest at all in fixing 
our broken justice system.
  Let's take a look at their records.