Morning for the families that lost these students teachers and administrators but beyond that these high school students, 17, 18 years old, some even younger have really become a national voice, a powerful voice on the issue of gun safety in schools. I often wonder when this moment might occur or whether it would occur. There has beentr such a long litany strain of mass shooting and whiskers and it is sad to say their numbers setting in with terrible things occurred in places like las vegas and texas and other states the wonder is that the event and is killing those innocent children sandy hehook Elementary School will tt be the Tipping Point and will america finally say enough and it appears on this day 13 days after the tragedy in florida that we are near or at a Tipping Point when it comes to gun safety. Some of it is personal and two weeks ago after this occurred my sixyearold granddaughter said to her mother that she had been warned in her first grade classroom that if the shooter should turn up at the School Firing a gun first she should stay away from the windows and second, she should lie down on the floor. I cant tell you what impact that had on me as a grandfather to think that my little first grader, this beautiful little girl, was worried about the moment when someone would walk into her classroom and try to kill the students and teachers were there. I cannot believe any sane person believes that the Second Amendment and the constitution the right to bear arms envisioned that possibility. Im sure it didnt. Im sure our Founding Fathers and we can debate it the rest of the day what their words actually meant, never envisioned that an american citizens right toto bear arms could somehow translate into violence against so many in the innocent people as it has over and over and over again. Last week i was in chicago and i was joined in the press conference by representatives at the Martin Luther king Junior Community center in the cell site. We stood together victims of gun violence and myself at a press conference, and get some ideas promised where weve been working for years to come that the scourge of gun violence in illinois and i stood with patrick who was wounded very 14, ten years ago in a Massive School shooting at Illinois University and to call, illinois. But a voice can join us and a graduate of Marjorie StonemanDouglas High School in parkland, florida name is brown and she graduated Stoneman Douglas in 2009 and shes currently a law student at chicago9. College of law. She is one of dozens of Stoneman Douglas graduates in the chicago anarea which include incidentaly for space with the chicago cubs, anthony rizzo. Hundreds if not thousands nationwide who joined together in the aftermath and that mastering that killed 14 Stoneman Douglas students and three staff. These young men have come together to speak up and urge their lawmakers about the nations epidemic of gun violence. The message is starting to resonate. With printing from the speaking class once a student at schools across the chicagoland area were walking out of class in solidarity with Stoneman Douglas students and calling for, since the reform. The students dont have time or patience for political gamesee n washington or springfield and they had seen their friends, kids just like yourself get shot in the classrooms and neighborhoods and they had had enough. Francine brown says and i, quote, its not about what is said in the aisle or sense but were supposed to protect the future for our children. I cannot agree more. The students and h young people across the country are changing the debate on gun violence. They are making it clear how i have absurd it is for lawmakers in this chamber across the rotunda or in state capitals to do nothing when americans get shot every day in their homes, neighborhoods, churches, nightclubs, concerts in schools. They are fed up with politicians in washington who ignore the overwhelming majority of americans who want common sense gun safety and who listen instead to paranoid, bowling, gun sales lobbyists. Remember, the National Rifle association and its allies oppose virtually anything that hurts gun sales and the fight against proposals that might reduce gun sales and try to rollback laws on the things that limit them. Thats their agenda but its not americas agenda. Corporate america is starting to walk away from nra and is no longer a source of pride that they are doing business with the National Rifle association. Just the opposite. Missing company after company and relationships with the nra because of itsin increasingly unhinged and t hysterical rhetoc on the issue of gun safety. Corporate america, some of the biggest corporations in our nation realize that the nra no longer speaks for responsible gun owners. When will congress realizes and know we need to advocate to keep our children safe and there is no single form that can stop every shooting. We know there are gaps in our gun laws that make it easy for criminals abusers in struggling children and mentally unstable people to get guns, even military style assault weapons with bump stops and highcapacity magazine clips. To quote these gaps and that requires the republicans to control congress to stop the nra. For starters, a republican probably could take up legislation that the leader of their party, president proposed thursday. Here is one of his tweets. I will be strongly pushing copies of background checks. Ellipsis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and an salable stops. Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue, i hope. The president tweeted. I hope as well. There are proposals that americans probably support. Lets do something. Ec of course, the nra is opposed to most of the is and we expect it. They might have some negative impact on gun sales but as the gun sales lobby is now in charge bills for the senate in the house . Deferring to the nra is the reason we have reached this moment in history. Remember, the senate has held one gunboat since President Trump came to office. And it was the vote to prevent Mental Health records from the Social Security administration going into the fbis gun background check system. That is the only vote since the Trump Administration took office. The only thing we have done, rollback a law on the books on Mental Health and background checks. That was a good way to gun lobby which claims to support enforcing the laws on the books that actually tries to rollback those laws means helping lift their sales. Lets show the students at Stoneman Douglas and across the country we hear them. I hope we show that reducing gun violence is a priority. A call on my republican colleagues to join the democrats in a bipartisan effort issued, effort, to treat the issue of gun safety with the same sense of urgency the American People believe is necessary. If republicans in a fraction of the effort to gun safety that they have two other issues we could get this done and done quickly. There are plenty of performs in the past that were completely consistent with second moment it would save lives even President Trump for the time being said he supports so lets get started. Not a giveaway to the gun lobby but work on closing loopholes lets have universal background checks. Over 90 of the American People believe we should keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons and mentally unstable people. I also believe that we should have those who are subject to protective orders for the rest of violence should be disqualified from buying a gun. I would say that those who are on the terrorist watchlist that we do not allow plan airplanes because fear they could do harm toi others shouldnt be allowed to buy guns in the united states. I want to add a provision in there that strong purchasers, the girlfriends with no criminal record who by the weapons to give to the boyfriend with a long record ought to have the book thrown at them. I want to thank the victims and advocates that are worked for many years to produce this epidemic of gun violence and i want them to know that i stand with them and i hope that we can all stand with them on a bipartisan basis. Esther president , i yield the floor. Mr. President. The majority whip. Mr. President , i heard the remarks of our colleagues from illinois and i too hope that we can get past the rhetoric and the talking points in the past and do something meaningful when it comes to Public Safety and address these terrible tragedies like the oneju that occurred at Stoneman Douglas high school in florida just two weeks ago. But we are not to do it by trotting out all of our laundry list of requests and say it has to be all of this for nothing because when you say here in washington and particularly progress, i want everything on the list or i want nothing, one thing is for sure, you will end up a with nothing. And that is unacceptable outcome particularly when it comes to the Public Safety crisis manifested here most recently at Stoneman Douglas high school in florida. We know that there are many failures andnd you might even cl is a systemic when it comes to children at Stoneman Douglas high school. First and foremost, why didnt federal and local lawenforcement followup on threats and warnings. This young man, a shooter, took the lives of 17 people he telegraphed in very clear unmistakable language what he intended to do but the very people that we trust and put in trust with Public Safety at the federal and state level did not respond. Alleged shooter was expelled from school for disciplinary reasons and we know the deputies in Broward County received at least 18 calls warning them course of several years, 18 calls and we know about the disturbing you to post where the shooter basically said what he intended to do and did, in fact, do later. We know that the fbi received many disturbing tips from citizens about the imminent danger posed by the shooter. Another question is whether Mental Health officials could have done more. We know that this young man had a long history of violent outburst and in 2016 we were told that he reportedly attempted suicide by drinking gasoline. He had been accused of verbal slurs against racial and rereligious minorities. We know florida has a state law like some have advocated at the federal level but a state law that permits for hospitalizations for people in Mental Health crisis but it seems that in this particular case Mental Health workers concluded that this individual was stable at the time they examined him. Why . And how . And why is that stand in such start contrast to the picture that we have been able to draw as a result of all of the information that we have received since this terrible shooting. If lawenforcement Public Health workers, School Officials were communicating and coordinating effectively with a have made the same decisions in this case and could they have made a difference in the outcome . I think we need the answers to thoses questions but there are two other questions we need to answer as well. One is why and how did the shooter have access to firearms in the first place and why didnt the schools officer intervene once the shooting began. All of us are angry at the fact that the shooting happened but that shouldnt tempt us to the easy solutions that at the end of the day would not make any difference in the outcome it wouldnt do any good. That is what we tend to get here in congress when we have hard issues like this, easy solutions, talking points that lead to no effective action and we cant let that happen here. As one columnist put it last fall victim to the politics of false hope and the most frequent refrain here in washington after some tragedy like this occurs is we need to i do something and what we need to do something effective, something that would change the likely outcome and we may not be able to protect every citizen against terrible tragedies like this but there are things we can do which make things better and that will be effective in changing the outcome, andol i believe in saving lives. Real solutions require to look at why the fbi local lawenforcement build respond to warming. We will take you like to hear from the public and leadership. Good afternoon everyone. As you can imagine, we had considerable discussion about the School Safety issue at lun lunch. I think the view of the vast majority of my conference is that we should try to make some progress on bills that we agree on and senator cornyn has put together a bill that the democratic leader and myself will support. We think could make some progress on fixing one of the backgrounds check issues and with that i will senator