WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the Parkland shooting by delivering one of his “Voices of Victims” speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Murphy told the stories of the students and educators whose lives we lost in last year’s mass shooting, in addition to stories of other victims of gun violence across the country. Murphy again called on his colleagues to pass commonsense gun violence prevention legislation. Last night, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, which is the House version of the background checks bill Murphy authored in the Senate.

“As we remember one year since the massacre at Parkland, as we strive to understand that this is an epidemic that takes 90 people every day, know that it is within our power to do something about it. We can't eliminate every single gun death. We can't stop every suicide or every homicide, but with commonsense legislation that's supported by 90% of Americans, we can make a big difference. And we can send a signal to would-be shooters that are contemplating violence that they should not interpret our silence as quiet endorsement,” said Murphy.

The full text of Murphy’s remarks is below:

Mr. President, from time to time I come to the floor of the Senate to share with my colleagues stories of the victims of gun violence. I had hoped that the statistics, which consistently show that this country has a gun violence rate that is 10 to 20 times higher than other similar high-income nations, the data that shows this continuing epidemic of mass slaughter in which we average a mass shooting almost every day would compel my colleagues to action. It hasn't and so I've tried to come down to the floor as often as I can to try to explain who these people are, the genius that has been lost from this world when lives are cut so short by gun violence, gun violence that's largely preventable in this country. And today I come to the floor with an unusually heavy heart because I want to talk about some of the lives that were lost a year ago today at the shooting in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It was a year ago that I was actually walking to the floor to give a speech on immigration that I learned of another mass shooting. It hits hard for those of us that represent Connecticut because we are still working through the ripples of grief that never ever disappear in a community that is shattered by an episode of catastrophic gun violence, Sandy Hook in our case. 17 students and teachers were gunned down in their classrooms in February of last year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

One of them was Peter Wang. Peter was 15 years old. He was a U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadet. He was getting ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year with his family. His two younger siblings and many other friends called him a natural leader. When the shooter entered the high school, Peter had a choice to make. He could run and protect himself or he could try to help his other fellow students in need. He chose the latter. He chose to hold a door open to help his classmates escape. And he saved other people's lives while losing his own. His classmate Jared Burns says for as long as we remember him, he is a hero. He yanked open a door that allowed dozens of classmates, teachers, and staffers to escape, other officials said. His middle school basketball coach said that he was just a joyful person. His sacrifice, according to his coach, “just made perfect sense because he was that selfless.” Peter was posthumously accepted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point for his heroic actions on that day.

Alex Schachter was a freshman who played the trombone and baritone in the marching band, and he loved to play basketball. He loved music so much that in middle school he took two band classes so he could get ready to join the marching band in high school, which was his dream. His Eagle Regiment Marching Band actually won the state championship in Tampa. His dad said he was just a sweetheart of a kid. Said that he just wanted to do well to make his parents happy. His dream was to attend the University of Connecticut. He told everybody. He was only a freshman but he knew where he was going to college. He wanted to come to my state, to Connecticut. He wore a UConn sweatshirt almost every single day to school. His favorite song was an old one by Chicago, 24 or 6 to 4, which is kind of an odd choice for a 14-year-old, but UConn's band actually chose to play that song at half time of one of UConn's football games. And UConn admitted Alex posthumously because his dream was to be a UConn Husky.

Helena Ramsay was full of laughter. She had this an infectious smile. She was 17 when she was shot that day. She loved all kinds of music though she was mostly into K-pop. She had all sorts of other interests too. She was interested in human rights and the environment. She joined the school's United Nations club and Christian faith-based first priority club. She was always looking out with her friends. One friend said, “When I was stressed out from my chemistry lab and thought I was going to fail, she calmed me down and told me everything was going to be okay.” One of her best friends said, “She was just one of the kindest people that I have ever met.” When the gunman walked into her classroom, she turned to her friend to make sure that her friend was safe and told her to shield herself with books. People described it as a moment of bravery in the face of horror.

Another hero that day was Aaron Feis. He was an assistant football coach and he was a security guard. He threw himself in front of his kids. That's how he died that day. The football program spokesperson said, “Aaron died the same way he lived. He put himself second. He was a very kind soul, a very nice man. He died a hero.” One of his football players who had been going through leukemia treatments remembered that Aaron guided him through those treatments. “He'd send me prayers, he’d send me bible scripts. He would just do stuff to cheer me up every day.” Aaron died protecting the kids at that school.

These four stories are amongst the 17 people that died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but 93 people die every day from gun violence. Most of those are suicides. A bunch of them are homicides. Others are accidental shootings, but they're all preventable. They're all preventable. And it's important that as we remember today the mass shooting at Parkland that even on those days where nobody puts up on cable news a mass shooting, there's still somewhere around 90 people who die every day. And I'll just tell you about one of them: Corey Dodd was 25 years old when he died last month in Baltimore, Maryland. That morning he told his wife Marissa to stay home and rest with their 3-year-old and their 3-week-old while he took the 5-year-old twins to school. After he dropped the twins off at school and pulled up outside their home, he was shot to death. The 3-year-old was inside and Marissa had to tell her kids that daddy isn't coming home. She said, “I had to tell the kids that daddy is done. He's not coming back.” Their family was planning to move because Corey was looking for work, and wherever he found work, they were going to move. He recently finished a program to earn his commercial driver's license and things were looking up for Corey and Marissa and their four kids.

I didn't know Corey but I know something about his death. Because I happened to be in Baltimore that day. I happened to be at Corey's kids' school the moment that he was shot. I was inside that school when an announcement came over the loudspeaker that there was a Code Green. I didn't know what a Code Green meant. Came to find out a few minutes later, it's what happens inside schools in Baltimore when there's a shooting in the neighborhood. They lock down the school. In our classroom, we turned down the shades. We turned off the light. And a few minutes later the police notified us that the scene was clear, that the school was safe, and the day could go on. But just down the hall from me inside that school unbeknownst to me were two twins whose father had been shot blocks away from that school. Their life will never be the same.

But part of the reason why we care so much about this epidemic is because it's not just the victims. It's also about the people that are left behind. Imagine going to school in an elementary school where you fear for your life when you walk to and from school, where parents of your friends are shot at 10:30 in the morning. It changes your brain. The trauma that these kids go through in a school like that. It makes their little, tiny developing brains unable to learn. There's a biological process that actually happens to these kids. That trauma is what Parkland has been going through for the last year. But that trauma is what kids in Baltimore and New Haven and Hartford and Chicago and New Orleans go through every single day. We are ruining millions of children all across this country because of an epidemic that we can choose to solve, that we can choose to do something about.

This week the House of Representatives had a hearing and a meeting to move forward a universal background checks bill that is supported by 97% of Americans. It will pass the House of Representatives with Republican and Democratic support by flying colors. And you know what the data tells us? That the most important thing we can do to save lives, to cut down on the 93 people who are killed every day, is to pass that universal background checks bill. States that have the background checks, there's 30% less gun crime, less gun homicide than in states that don't have the universal background checks. So as we remember one year since the massacre at Parkland, as we strive to understand that this is an epidemic that takes 90 people every day, know that it is within our power to do something about it. We can't eliminate every single gun death. We can't stop every suicide or every homicide, but with commonsense legislation that's supported by 90% of Americans, we can make a big difference. And we can send a signal to would-be shooters that are contemplating violence that they should not interpret our silence as quiet endorsement. It's up to us. I yield the floor.

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