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GUN LEGISLATION
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, when I returned to Connecticut after the shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, I saw a level of fear on the faces of the parents and children whom I spoke to that I have never seen before. This country has lived through mass shooting after mass shooting, rising rates of homicide, but there was something different in the eyes of these families as they once again had to contemplate the idea that our schools are no longer safe places, that our supermarkets are no longer safe spaces.
But they also were contemplating the idea that Congress was so caught up in its own politics, so addicted to backing into our own corners that we wouldn't be able to do anything meaningful about the thing that matters most to parents and to families in this country: the physical safety of their children. Think about it. What matters more to you than the physical well-being of your children? You would give away everything--your job, your car, the roof over your head--in order to guarantee that your children were safe from physical harm.
So the anxiety and the fear that I saw in Connecticut and that I think many of my colleagues saw when they returned to their States was not just for the safety of their children but also a fear about the ability of government to rise to this moment and do something and do something meaningful.
I believe that this week we will pass legislation that will become the most significant piece of anti-gun violence legislation Congress will have passed in 30 years. This is a breakthrough, and more importantly, it is a bipartisan breakthrough. I am glad to join my friend Senator Cornyn on the floor today to talk a little bit about the piece of legislation that our colleagues will be able to look at hopefully in a matter of moments and that this body will be able to consider this week.
I want to thank Senator Cornyn, Senator Tillis, and Senator Sinema in particular. It was a hard road to get to this compromise, but nothing worthwhile is easy. And nobody in a compromise gets everything they want. This bill will be too little for many; it will be too much for others. But it isn't a box-checking exercise. This bill is not window dressing. This bill is going to save lives. This bill is going to save thousands of lives. It is going to be something that every single Member of this Senate who votes for it can be proud of.
I want to tell you a little bit about it, and some of this has already been covered by my friend Senator Cornyn. First, let me talk about the provisions in this bill that change our Nation's firearms laws.
First, we are going to invest in the development of crisis intervention orders. We are going to give money out to States that they will be able to use to implement what are commonly called red flag laws. These are laws that allow local authorities and courts to take weapons, firearms, temporarily away from individuals who are threatening to hurt themselves or others.
We just saw Connecticut's red flag law be used just in the last month or so to take weapons away from a young man who was making threats to shoot up schools, potentially saving dozens of lives.
Under this bill, every State will be able to use significant new Federal dollars to be able to expand their programs to try to stop dangerous people--people contemplating mass murder or suicide--from being able to have access to the weapons that allow them to perpetrate that crime.
As Senator Cornyn said, we will also make those dollars eligible for a narrow range of other court-based anti-violence interventions--
something that was very important to our Republican colleagues.
Second, this bill is going to make sure that no domestic abusers can purchase or own a gun. We are closing the boyfriend loophole. What we know is that in States that have taken this step already, there are 10 percent fewer intimate partner deaths. This is an incredibly important step forward. We know this provision alone is going to save lives of so many women who unfortunately die at the hands of a boyfriend or an ex-
boyfriend who hunts them down with a firearm.
To be consistent with State felony restoration rights, this legislation will allow individuals to be able to get their right back after a period of time but only for first-time offenders and only if there are no crimes of violence in the intervening time.
This bill will provide for enhanced background checks for younger buyers. What we know is that the profile of the modern mass shooter is often in the 18- to 21-year-old range, and so this bill has enhanced background checks for those individuals, including a call to the local police department--a process that can take up to 3 days and up to 10 days if there are particular signs of concern that investigators need to perform followup on. That enhanced background check is going to make sure that younger buyers who are in crisis have another check performed--perhaps a short period of time in between their decision to buy a lethal weapon to perform a crime and their ability to get that weapon.
This bill has new criminal statutes banning gun trafficking and straw purchasing. This is incredibly important for our cities. We have a flow of illegal guns coming into these cities, and yet, for decades, for some reason, Congress has not given our Federal authorities the ability to interrupt these gun-running rings because we have no effective ban at a Federal level on trafficking and straw-purchasing. We will after we pass this law.
Finally, we clarify under this bill who needs to register as a federally licensed gun dealer. One of the individuals who sold a weapon to a mass shooter in Odessa, TX, should have been licensed as a Federal dealer, but he wasn't, and he sold the gun to a person who was prohibited from buying the gun because of his mental health history, without a background check. We will clarify in this law that individuals like that need to register as Federal firearms dealers, and they need to perform background checks.
As Senator Cornyn said, this bill makes a historic investment in mental health--a historic investment in mental health. Thanks to Debbie Stabenow and Roy Blunt, we are going to be able to expand the certified community health center model nationally. That literally means millions of people in this country in underserved areas who have no access to mental health are going to be able to get it after we pass this bill.
We have significant new funding in this bill for school-based health centers to make sure that kids are better served, especially those kids who are in crisis.
We have help in this bill for pediatricians who are trying to do telehealth consults with behavioral health professionals who are trying to get more training on mental health so they can help their patients.
Finally, we make investments in school and community safety, funds to help schools make their campuses safer places but also funds for community-based programs that are doing good work in cities from Boston to Hartford to Dallas interrupting cycles of violence in our communities.
For 30 years--murder after murder, suicide after suicide, mass shooting after mass shooting--Congress did nothing. This week, we have a chance to break this 30-year period of silence with a bill that changes our laws in a way that will save thousands of lives. It is a compromise. It is a bipartisan compromise. It is a path forward to the way that both Republicans and Democrats can work together to address some of the most vexing, most difficult challenges this Nation faces.
We have a chance to show parents and kids and families that we take their safety seriously and we are prepared to do not just something but something that saves lives in order to protect them.
I yield the floor.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 105
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