Transcripts For CSPAN U.S. Senate Florida Senators On Parkland School Shooting 20180216

Shooting. Mr. Nelson mr. President . The presiding officer the senate will come to order. Mr. Nelson mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from florida. Mr. Nelson mr. President , those were all our children. Thoalings of us who those of us who are parents, you can imagine the parents of those children wondering what else can be done. Because yesterday a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in northern broward county, parkland, florida, walked on to the campus with a gas mask, smoke grenades, and carrying an ar15 assault rifle. He pulled the fire alarm. He waited for the students to come out into the hallway and he opened fire. And as a result, 14 families are grieving. Their worst fears have become reality, and more than a dozen other students who were injured, theyre in the hospital and some of them in critical condition. At some point weve got to say enough is enough. At some point we as a society have got to come together and put a stop to this. This senator grew up on a ranch. I have hunted all my life. I have had guns all my life. I still hunt with my son. But an ar15 is not for hunting. Its for killing. But despite these horrific events that are occurring over and over, these tragedies have led so many of us to come right here to this floor and to beg our colleagues to take commonsense actions that we all know will help protect our children and our fellow citizens from these kind of tragedies. And we get nowhere. So when is enough going to be enough . Sandy hook elementary, 20 students killed. That wasnt enough. The pulse nightclub in orlando, 49 people killed, a terrorist. That wasnt enough. Las vegas, 58 people killed, that wasnt enough. Or just a year ago in the same county as the parkland murders, broward county, Fort Lauderdale airport, five people killed. That wasnt enough. Now this high school, 17 killed, some as young as 14 years old. So when is enough going to be enough. This senator has spoken to local officials on the ground. Ive spoken to the superintendent of the schools who in his own way is going through the grieving process. Ive spoken to the f. B. I. Ive spoken to the Sheriffs Department to make sure that they have everything they need but when i finish talking to these folks and as we get through with the dreamer legislation today, im headed down there and when i go to the hospital and see the families and see the hospital victims, all i can thank is how many more times are we going to have to go through this and those families are going to say to me, when is enough enough . To those who say now that its not the time to talk about gun violence because its too soon, we dont want to politicize right after a tragedy, thats what is said over and over. Then i would ask when is the time . If now is not the right time, when is the right time . After the next shooting . Or after the one thats going to come after that . Because these are not going to stop unless we change ourselves as a culture. How many more times do we have to do this . How many more folks have to die . When is enough going to be enough. So lets dont hide from it. Lets have a conversation about this right now, not just about Mental Illness and thats part of it, not just about protection at our schools and thats part of it. Lets get to the root cause. Lets come together and help end this violence. Lets talk about that 19yearold carrying an ar15. Lets do what needs to be done and lets get these assault weapons off our streets. Lets accomplish something on background checks. My state passed a constitutional amendment, florida, 1998. Background checks have to be done in the purchase of a gun. Its never been implemented totally and its never been enforced. A simple background check. The terrorist that killed 49 in orlando at the pulse nightclub, he had been on the terrorist watch list. If wed have had a background check there, he wasnt on it but maybe in a background check, we ought to include those who had been on a terrorist watch list. Lets have a conversation about this. Oh, and do you remember a couple of years ago there was a proposal on the floor that if youre on the terrorist watch list, you cant buy a gun. Thats pretty common sense. We wont let them get on an airplane because we dont want them taking down a commercial airliner. But they dont have a restriction of buying a gun. So lets get at the root cause of this issue. Lets do what we all know needs to be done. And lets do it now, not later. Lets just not talk about it. Lets do something about it. Lets make what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School a Pivotal Moment in this countrys history, not because it was one of the largest Mass Shootings but hopefully because it was the last. Its with mr. Rubio madam president . The presiding officer the senator from florida. Mr. Rubio madam president , i join my colleague, the senior senator from florida here today with a broken heart as i do most of the nation would join us in the events of yesterday. And there, indeed, was a time in the history of our country where after an event such as this, there was a mourning period that followed with a policy debate. But today that time is interrelated and intermixed. I dont blame it. Im not upset about it. In fact, i think theres just been too many of these now. And thats why we continue to face this. We continue to face these. I think it is a legitimate thing to say that even as we mourn, we have an obligation to ask ourselves, is there something we could have done or should do to ensure that we dont see these things happening. Its clichest to say but i think its important to say that. Im the father of two young ladies who happen to be in high school. I cannot imagine but i can only envision what it would be like if one day here walking through the capitol i get a text or one of those news alerts that says theres been a shooting in the high school that they attend. And i can only imagine how fearful it would be when suddenly those texts are not being answered and those calls are not being returned. I thought about that last night and what it must feel like to be one of those parents at the hotel waiting for word because you havent heard from your children in hours or how painful it must have been to those whose job it was to go to these parents and inform them that their child who they had sent off to school in the morning, perhaps just weeks away from graduation, that their life had ended senselessly in an event such as this. And because of what happened yesterday and because its happened so often, people from across the political spectrum are arguing theres got to be something we can do. You have to be able to do something. And i agree with that sentiment. I understand it. And i would add, though, if we do something, it should be something that works. And the struggle up to this point has been that most of the proposals that have been offered would not have prevented not just yesterdays tragedy but any of those in recent history. And im going to say now what im going to really emphasize at the enders just because these proposals would not have prevented these does not mean that we, therefore, just raise our hands and say, therefore, theres nothing we can do. It is a tough issue because it is part of the reason why it is so hard to prevent these. Its because if someone decides that they are going to take it upon themselves to kill people, whether its a political assassination of one person or the mass killing of many, if one person decides to do it and theyre committed to that task, it is a very difficult thing to stop, but that again does not mean we should not try to prevent as many of them as we can. Perhaps the answer on how to prevent them begins by asking ourselves what do these things have in common . They have two things in common. The first is every single one of them was premeditated and planned. None of these shootings were an act of passion or someone got up in the morning, was upset and decided to do something out of rage. They all involved careful planning and premeditation. They deliberately took steps to get the guns, the weapons, the ammunition that they needed. In many cases they carefully studied the outline of the target which they were going to go after. They specific planned soft targets. Theres evidence of that in this case. And they planned to maximize the loss of life. They acquired the weapon they needed and they used tactics that they needed to kill as many people as they could. By the way, because of that premeditation and planning is one of the reasons why these laws that have been proposed wouldnt have prevented them. Because when someone is planning and premeditating ante be an attack, they will figure out a way to evade those laws or quite frankly to comply with them in order to get around it. That may be an argument for new laws of a different kind but its what makes it hard though not impossible. The second thing they have in common is that almost all of these attacks were preceded by clear signs of what was to come. A cursory review this morning of just a handful of the recent cases points that out. We are all familiar with the loss of life of over 20 people at a texas church not long ago. This is a case of a killer whose wife said that he tried to kill her, an individual was arrested and convicted for domestic violence, which was unfortunately never reported to the background check system, an individual who escaped a Mental Health facility who was caught sneaking guns onto an air force base while on active duty, who was discharged from the military for bad conduct, who had social media posts that bragged about buying dogs to shoot them and actually expressed admiration for the South Carolina killer in that Church Killing a few years ago. An individual who was actually charged with animal mistreatment just a few years earlier. In sandy hook, we know that the killer had a spread sheet with details of the Previous School shootings. There was also an individual whose mental state was rapidly deteriorating to the point where he spoke to no one but his mother who he ultimately killed before carrying out the horrific massacre, but someone who was isolated in the room all day, largely playing video games. The pulse attack which was precipitated and inspired by an adherence to a jihadist ideology. Senator nelson has already pointed out this individual not once but twice had been on the radar screen of the f. B. I. And both times had been cleared. They interviewed him, they asked him questions. He didnt meet the standard for staying on the list, and he came off. We are still learning facts about yesterdays killer. Unlike these others, we may learn more because he was apprehended alive, and authorities have had an opportunity to question him, and that will continue, but heres what we know. We know he was expelled from school for behavior that often that the administrators thought was dangerous. We know that from press accounts now, both teachers and students did not act surprised that he was the assailant. In fact, many of them said that there was a running joke, obviously not a joke anymore, that one day he would do Something Like this. We know that the media and others have discovered social media posts which are in hindsight deeply disturbing as they point to glorification of gun violence and murder and animal cruelty even apparently. We saw reports this morning of a post on youtube a year ago where he posted that he wanted to be a school shooter. This was alerted to the f. B. I. Who had followed up, by the way, in an interview with that person who alerted them. They all have this premeditation in common. We sit here in hindsight and see all of these little points and say taken together, these are warning signs. The problem is theyre not taken together. Because the people who might have known about him being expelled might not have known about the social media posts. And the people who knew about the social media posts may not have known about what he wrote on youtube. And the people who knew about the youtube may not have known about the fact that police have been called several times for Different Reasons and so forth. And so, hence, the choolg for why its so hard to find something that works. And there are a lot of proposals. I will share the ones because i have heard them before and i will hear them today. I am not diminishing them. I dont want this to be taken as because it wont work, i dont want to hear your argument. I understand. I really do. You read in the newspaper that they used a certain kind of gun and therefore lets make it harder to get those kinds of guns. I dont have some sort of de facto religious objection to that or some ideological commitment to that per se. There is all kinds of guns that are outlawed and weaponry thats outlawed and or special category. The problem is we did that once, and it didnt work for a lot of reasons. One of them is there is already millions of these on the street. Those things, they last 100 years. And so you could pass a law that makes it hard to get this kind of gun in a new condition, but youre going to struggle to keep it out of the hands of someone who has decided thats what they want to use because there are so many of them out there already that would be grandfathered in. You can do a background check. The truth is in almost all these cases i cited, the individual either erroneously passed a background check or would have passed it or did. Again, even if they couldnt pass the background check, then they could go they could buy them the way ms13 does and other gangs and other street elements do, from the black market. Again, not because we shouldnt have a background check. Im just trying to be clear and honest here. If someone has decided im going to commit this crime, they will find a way to get the gun to do it. That doesnt mean you shouldnt have a law that makes it harder. It just means understand to be honest it isnt going to stop this from happening. You could still pass the law, per se, but youre still going to have these horrible attacks. And thats why i do think that in some circles, it isnt fair or right to create this impression that somehow this attack happened yesterday because there is some law out there that we could have passed to prevent it, for if there was such a law that would have prevented yesterday, i think a lot of people would have supported it. But i also want to be honest to people who share my point of view on these issues. I think its also wrong to say that there is nothing we can do. And i would admit that perhaps even i in the past in the way i have addressed this issue or spoken about it may have come off as dismissive, with the argument that since none of these laws would have worked, there is just nothing we can do, and well just have to deal with it. Just because i dont have a quick or easy answer for how to prevent these doesnt mean that we dont have an obligation to try and find one. And by finding one, i dont mean a quick and easy answer. I mean an answer that would work. When i took office here, i swore to uphold the constitution of the united states. Every element of it. I didnt write the constitution, but i agree with it and i support it. The Second Amendments in the constitution. You can debate what the out lines of the second outlines of the Second Amendment are or how far it goes, but its in there. And i happen to support it. And i happen to oftentimes point to the Second Amendment and say its the Second Amendment, right after free speech, which tells you how important it was to those who wrote those words. I still believe every bit of that. But i also recognize that if its fair to say that the Second Amendment is so important and i want to reiterate it is because of how high up it is in the ranking from first to second. Its the second one. Then i have to recognize that there is part of the constitution that was written even before the Second Amendment, and its the preamble, and that preamble lays out why we have a constitution and ultimately why we have a government, and in it says that two of the reasons why we have a government and therefore two of the reasons why we have a senate is to ensure domestic tranquility and to promote the general welfare. And these School Shootings and Mass Shootings and murders that we are seeing now an an accelerated pace, these things are by definition a threat to our domestic tranquility and a threat to our general welfare. The murder of children in schools, the murder of moviegoers, the murder of people at a church, the murder of people at a dance club on a saturday night, these are all places where we should be enjoying the general welfare and the domestic tranquility. And so even as we recognize it, the Second Amendment gives americans the right to bear arms and protect themselves, a right that i strongly support and will continue to support, we must also recognize that same constitution places upon this government an obligation to ensure domestic tranquility and promote general welfare. And we must confront the fact that over the last 20 years, these attacks have accelerated, and we must recognize the evidence that they are not isolated from one another. They are building upon one another. We must recognize the scary reality that even as a nation mourns and as parents grieve, it is a high probability if not certainty that somewhere in america right now, some equally troubled and deranged violent individual is reading and watching coverage of this attack and gaining from it not sorrow but inspiration. That even as we speak here now, even as we stand here in mourning and even as the days go by, there are probably some people out there who are going to try to do this because of what happened yesterday. That is a frightening thought, but it is a reality. And it challenges us to find an answer to a very difficult issue. How do we take all of this bits and pieces of information out there, how do we in this society confront someone who does things that in another era we would say, well, theyre just a strange person, theyre just weird, theyre just going through a phase . We cant do it anymore. There is no longer such a thing as just an innocent posting online that you just look at and say thats just them, they are just strange, they dont mean anything by it or theyre harmless. We cannot assume that anymore. None of us. How do we create a system where all of these disconnected pieces and bits of data could somehow be tied together so that whenever it was that this killer got a hold of these weapons and proceeded before conducting this attack, someone would say hold on a second, this person is the person who got expelled from school, who had these social media posts, who said he wanted to be a school shooter, who has had an adoptive mother passed away in november, who is now living isolated, who the students all suspected him of being a person who could one day be violent, how do you take these bits and pieces of information and turn them into a usable source of data that perhaps either prevents the acquisition of a weapon or or preferably intervenes in that persons life before they carry this out . If anyone here tells you that they have that one figured out, theyre not being honest. This is hard, but we need to do it. We need to somehow figure it out because it goes to the very core of why we exist to begin with. There is no greater obligation of our government than to keep our people safe, from threats both foreign and domestic, and we must acknowledge that this is a threat, that for whatever reason we now live in a society where someone at 19 years of age and the freest and in the freest and the most prosperous nation in all of Human History has decided to take it upon themselves to take the lives of 17 individuals and severely injure 14 others, and actually probably tried to kill even more. What is happening in our country and our culture and our society . And if there is something to be done with our laws, we should do that, too. Im not saying dont focus on the gun part. We also have to focus on the violence part, for to talk about gun violence requires you to talk about both, and the violence part is the one that goes well beyond an easy government solution and entails all kinds of different aspects of modern life that we are still grappling with. And so i hope that we can start to figure it out. I havent had the time, frankly, in less than 18 hours to bring to the floor a proposal for how we move forward or what the forum would be for this conversation to even begin, but i know that we can no longer just chalk it up to isolated instances, because its happened too often, and sadly i believe will happen again until we confront it and try to solve it, and i hope that we will, and i believe that we can. I believe that we must. Whereas i said at the outset and i will say at the conclusion, it goes to the core of why we even exist to begin with. Keeping our people safe. No matter how new, how different, or how unique the threat may be. Madam president , i yield the announcer here is a look at our live coverage for friday. President mitt romney will speak at a republican fundraiser in provo, at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. Will ben2, adam schiff at the council on foreign relations, talking about some of the global challenges facing the u. S. You can watch that at 8 30 a. M. Eastern. On cspan3, a conversation with vietnams changing relationship with the u. S. And china, and 9 30 a. M. Eastern. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on lectures in history, former Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder at virginia commonwealth university. I have a one word definition that i use for politics. Can anyone guess what that is . Money. [laughter] something that is a proposition before any tribunal that does not involve money. Announcer sunday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern from the rest point center of world history, a combat medic during the vietnam war. My father served in world war ii. For a black man, whenever you was your military service, you hope, would confirm your bona fides as a redblooded american citizen. 4 00 p. M. On railamerica, we look back to 1988 when president reagan spoke at a cpac dinner. The americangan people know what limited government, tax cuts, deregulation, and move toward privatization have meant. It has meant the largest peacetime in our history. They do not want to throw that away for budgets beholden to liberal special interests. Announcer every weekend on cspan3. This weekend, the cspan cities tour takes you to lynchburg, virginia, located along the james river. It is home to both Liberty University and Thomas Jeffersons retreat. With the help of our Comcast Cable partners, we will explore lynchburgs rich literary life and history. On saturday at 5 00 p. M. Eastern, we will visit the and ann spencere the house, to hear on how this on it brought how this poet brought the renaissance to lynchburg. 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Watch the cspan cities tour , andning at 5 00 eastern sunday at 2 00 p. M. On American History to unseat and three. On cspan3, as we explore america. Former white house chief strategist steve bannon was subpoenaed to appear before the house intelligence committee, but lawmakers could hold him in contempt for refusing to answer their questions. Up next, from mike conaway and adam schiff, who spoke to reporters after meeting with mr. Bannon. Something going on you guys are interested in