your leadership because it's captured the attention of our nation. this filibuster right here -- i know a little bit about social media. this filibuster right here has been the focus, trending on twitter, the focus of facebook. it has created a media attention on a problem because in a sense you're giving hope. your very intention of coming here has met the need, the urgent need that the public has seen that this body here, this auspicious body, this greatest deliberative body on the planet earth, that this senate, designed by the constitution to deal with the biggest problems of our land, that this body would not just go on as business as usual. what you chose to do is to say enough. stop. we are going to have a discussion about an issue that is not just on the minds of the american public, but it is grievously affecting the hearts and the spirit of our nation. tens of thousands of people since sunday have been standing around our country in vigils, in solidarity, expressing their pain and expressing their sorrow but expressing the feelings that they have that we should be better than to allow such grievous, terroristic hateful acts to happen on our soil. and so while the american public has been stepping up, this body thaod had a different plan, to move on a piece of legislation, to barely acknowledge this. and so before i want to really refrain this, senator, i just want to say thank you to you for the courage that you have put forth to say enough is enough. no business as usual. that we are going to stop. and that we are going to push for two commonsense, sensible -- commonsense amendments that cannot end gun violence in america, cannot stop terrorist activity here and abroad but that can take a step, a constructive step towards beginning to choke the flow of commonality of these incidents on american soil, and has been said time and time again, as has been said by a number of senators today, what reason was our government organized in the first place? you heard angus king wearing the constitution on his tie, talk to that preamble. common defense, domestic tranquillity. and so i want to frame this again, but the first frame i just have to say you and i talked about it after caucus lunch yesterday. you and i talked about it during the day. we talked about it last night. and you are not talking about it today. you are doing it. no business as usual, and for that i'm grateful. and it is merited that we also thank the many people who are involved. when the senate is open past midnight, hundreds of people have to be here as well, not just the people you see here on the floor. the pages who are in their first days, and that is their -- one of their seminal experiences. not the folks who are working behind the dais there, not the great republican colleagues who have had to man that chair, but security guards and subway operators and the people who are seating folks in the gallery. and so i just want to say tonight thank you. i want to point out the fact that chris has helped to pay for food for not only a lot of the folks here but including the republican cloakroom. i appreciate you, senator murphy. but now i want to get to the framing of what this is about because there has been a lot talked about tonight, most of which i agree with. a lot discussed, a lot far afield, but you came here with a purpose around two issues that are of common sense. one is that in the united states of america, if our investigatory authorities see people as threats, are investigating people because they are believed to be desirous of doing acts of terrorism on american soil, people who have already been banned from -- in some cases from flying on airplanes, that we should take a step, we should make it the law of this land that that person who was a suspected terrorist, that person who can't get on an airplane, hey, that person also should not be able to buy an assault rifle. that is so common sense that as you said earlier today perhaps four or five hours ago, many people in america are shocked when they realize that that loophole, that terrorist loophole actually exists. what you're fighting for, senator murphy, is not radical. it's not out of the box. it's common sense. and what's even more important is in this day and age when partisanship does, does cripple this body from time to time on big issues, that this issue is actually not partisan. study after study have shown, survey after survey, poll after poll says overwhelmingly americans agree with this. in fact, overwhelmingly american gun owners, over 80% say we need to close the terrorist loophole. in fact, n.r.a. members, over 70%, say we should close a terrorist loophole. what nation when they are at war where your enemy is actually trying to incite terrorism in your country, when your enemy is explicitly saying exploit this loophole, what country would keep that loophole wide open where it is easy for someone with terroristic aims to hurt, injure, destroy and kill? but you took it one step further, and i was happy this morning to work on an amendment with you that says you capital just close a terrorist loophole and leave open, as you called it hours ago, a back door for those terrorists to use. that means if you do background checks, they need to be universal, because if it's just the brick-and-mortar gun retailers, yeah, you go there, you're going to have to do a background check. by the way, those background checks stop people every single year, not just people that may be suspected of terrorism. frankly they stop criminals. but we now know that we as a nation have changed where the buyers of weapons have migrated from the brick-and-mortar stores now to another market, often online or at gun shows, and unless we close those avenues for terrorists to use, they are going to use them so very much common sense again, the second thing that you are saying today is hey we need to close a terrorist loophole and we need to make sure we're doing universal background checks. now, those -- that's the reason we're here. the grit of a senator and the common sense of two amendments that are very critical. but i want to for a moment tell you what was perhaps the most touching time for me in this 13, 14 hours. and i went and actually checked the rules and you can't acknowledge people that are in the gallery, but i have to say tonight -- they are not here now, so i'm not acknowledging anybody that's here, but your wife and child showed up. and when i heard you talk as a parent about the love of your child and how you did something that's so important for us as americans. in fact, i think it's at the core of who we are, that this is what our country calls us to do, which is to take courageous steps of empathy and say when other people's children are dying, that that's not their problem, that it triggers empathy in me. i think about my own child, i think about my niece, i think about my nephew, i think about my family. you see, there is a privilege in this country that is a dangerous type of privilege. it is the type of privilege that says if something is not happening to me personally, if a problem is not happening to me personally, then it's not a problem. it's not a problem if it's not happening to me personally. when that's contrary to what we say about ourselves as a country. the spirit of this country has been that we're all in this together, that we all do better when we all do better. that if there is injustice in our midst, affecting another family, another state, another neighborhood, then that's an injustice that is threatening the whole. senator murphy, this is one of your core values. it is expressed by great americans. it was expressed by martin luther king in perhaps one of the greatest pieces of american literature, the letter from the birmingham jail. this idea that if something is going on wrong in connecticut, the tragedy happens there, children are murdered there, that that's not connecticut's problem. that's all of our problems. king said in justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, that we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a common garment of destiny. and so that's to me a core element of our nation. it's what our founders understood when they said that we're in this together, the very declaration of independence ends with a nod toward that interdependence, toward that interwoven nature. it was set by our founders on the declaration of independence right at the end, that in order for this nation to work, we must be there for each other, we must care about each other, we must invest ourselves in each other. that if an injustice happens to our brother or my sister, it's affecting me. that declaration of independence ends with those words. we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. and so now we see these tragedies, and i don't want to believe that we're becoming numb to them, that we see them as some distant reality and not as a personal attack because when you attack one american, you attack us all. and when you have an avenue where you can make a difference to preserve and protect life and you do not claim it, to me that is a sin. there is a great writer, a great thinker, great nobel laureate who once said to the effect, he said the opposite of -- of -- of love is not hate, it's indifference the opposite of love is not just hate, it's action. lack of caring, lack of compassion. and so what gets me upset about this issue is that we have commonsense tools that have been enumerated by wise colleagues of mine who have legal scholars in our caucus who understand clearly there is no absolute right when it comes to freedom of speech. that even as has been quoted many times, the majority opinion in the heller case, there is no absolute right to bear arms. it has been said by multiple senators, just closing the terrorist loophole doesn't infringe the rights of any american to bear arms, of any american sportsman, any american seeking self-defense. that this is just saying that, hey, if you're someone who is believed to be a terrorist, you should not be able to purchase a gun. you're someone on that no-fly list, you should not be able to purchase a gun. and by the way, even that, as you pointed out, there should be due process so that if you have to grieve that, there is a process for which you to grieve you being on that no-fly list. and so for me, when i see your child come here to listen to her father, when i see parents, many of my colleagues have children, i hope that all of us, all of us when we hear about a mass shooting don't just say i'm praying for those families, begin to think that that happening to my fellow american is a threat to me, it's happening to us all, we all are lesser as a result of it, but we have to think to ourselves how would it feel if i fail to act to do what was right, to close a terrorist loophole. what if that person right now that our enemy is working to radicalize, what if that person in our country right now that our enemy is working to inspire, what about that pesh right now who is seeking to do harm to americans, what happens if they exploit that loophole tomorrow, next month, next year. what happens if they exploit that loophole and this time they go to a playground, a train station, a movie theater, a church, and it happens to be your playground, your movie theater, your school, your church, your child. if you know there is something we can do to stop our enemy from getting arms and doing us harm and we have seen now from san bernadino to orlando, florida, that terrorists are looking to do us harm, and we can stop our enemy with a commonsense amendment that is believed and supported by the majority of americans, the majority of republicans, the majority of gun owners, the majority of n.r.a. members, and yesterday this body can't do that, we are setting ourselves up for future acts of violence and terror that could have been prevented. what if it's our child or our family or our community or our neighborhood? and there is one more step i have to mention, senator murphy. there is one more step that it's important to this, because if you close the terrorist loophole and make sure that those terrorists cannot exploit the back door, if you make sure those background checks are universal, again agreed to by the majority of americans, the majority of republicans, the majority of gun owners, the majority of n.r.a. members, you're also going to benefit by creating a background check system that stops criminals from getting guns that better undermine their ability to get their hands on weapons that they want to do to carry out violence in our neighborhoods, communities, in our cities, and that's where it gets deeply personal to me. because like you have for your child, every american has for their kids, we have big dreams. this is a nation of dreams. we have something called the american dream, which i say is known across the globe. it is a bold dream, it is a humble dream that this is a nation where our children can grow up, have the best of opportunity. our children can do better than us. it is the american dream. but the challenge i see with american reality where we have such liberal access to weapons by people who are criminals, what that has resulted in, i have seen it myself, is so many children taken, killed, murdered time and time again, every day, every hour, time and time again, another dream destroyed, another dream devastated, another dream murdered. and that is something that's thought just words to me. i have seen it across my state, in our cities, on street corners where we have set up shrines with candles and teddy bears marking the place after place, street after street where children have been murdered. i have stood on too many street corners looking down at bodies, 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, 15-year-olds, 16-yards murdered -- 16-year-olds murdered in our nation with irregularity that was not seen in wars past. i've been to funerals with parents begging us to do something about the violence in our country. i've seen children that are living but yet live with trauma and stress because they hear gunshots too much in their neighborhoods. we have the power to stop this and we can't assume that these problems are not ours. langston hughes said it so poetically, there is a dream in this land with its back against the wall to save the dream for one, we must save the dream for all. how many of our children's dreams must be destroyed by gun violence before we do the commonsense things that we agree on to begin to shrink those numbers? it's written in genesis when joseph's brother see him approaching with murder in their eyes and said here cometh the dreamer. let us slay him and see what becomes of his dreams. we have lost so many. so many have been slain but the dream of america can die. there are people who want to take it from us. they want to inject it with fear and hate. the dream of our country cannot die. there are rules and loopholes that allow mad men and terrorists and criminals to get their hands on assault weapons. we cannot let the dream of our country die and be dashed and be killed. we can do something about it, and it is unacceptable when you have the power to do nothing. and so we elected to this body, caretakers of that dream, the torch of the light of the hope of the promise of this country that still attracts so many, where hundreds of millions in our nation believe, where so many outside of our nation believe, we must make sure that we form a more perfect union, where we see unfinished business of work to be done, where we answer the call of our citizenry. so i return to where i began. senator murphy, there are literally thousands of americans taking to the streets this past week. i saw them in new jersey, read about them in california and florida. i see them in washington, d.c. here in our nation's capital. today i'm proud that you decided that that dream was worth fighting for, that the call of our nation had to be answered, that that dream demanded something more than business as usual. 13 plus hours you've stood. i don't know how long it will take, but i know this is an issue closing the terrorist loophole, closing the avenues for terrorists to go online or gun shows, just doing would is such common sense to keep us safe. i know we will win this battle. it's not a matter of if. it's a matter of when. and so as the hour grows later and later and this filibuster drags on, i just want to ask this perhaps important question. you and i both know from the incoming you've had, thousands of calls in your office, that one of the problems we have to have as we allow our inability to do everything that