vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber wishing to vote or change his or her vote? if not, the yeas are 96, the nays are 4, and the motion is agreed to. cloture having been invoked, the motion to proceed to h.r. 1799, which the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to calendar number 11, h.r. 1799, an act to amend the small business act and the cares act to cover the period of the paycheck protection program, and for other purposes.

the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent that following morning business tomorrow, all postcloture time on the motion to proceed to calendar number 11, h.r. 1799, paycheck protection program, be expired and motion to proceed be greed to, that the amendments be as follows, kennedy, rubio 1405. that it be in order for senator paul or his designee to raise a budget point of order. at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, the senate vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed and on the motion to wave and if -- waived, and if agreed, the bill be read a third time and the senate vote on passage of the bill, if amended, with 60 votes required for passage, all

with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, it is so ordered. mr. murphy: mr. president -- mr. president, i would -- i would make another request. i have 14 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: it is hard to believe that i'm on this floor again, after losing ten more

people, this time in boulder, colorado, to another horrible mass shooting in our state. i'm sure the presiding officer doesn't remember that last week, after the events in atlanta, i came over to your desk and i said that we were so sorry in colorado for what had happened in atlanta and then just three or four days later, it happened again in colorado. and i've spent the past day learning about the victims of this terrible crime and i want america to know what extraordinary human beings we've lost in my state. here they are, mr. president. denny stong, age 20. denny was a graduate of fair

view high school, an interventilatored smart -- interverted smart kid. he was covering at the super and he once posted on facebook. i can't stay home, i'm a grocery store worker. nevin stanistic, his dad he was a really good, a hardworking boy. his parents are refugees from bosnia who left in the 1990's to escape the war. the reverend at their local church said their family fled the war and everything they had was either left behind or destroyed. they left everything to save

their lives and came here to have a new start, said the pastor. they came to america to have a new start only to have their son's life ended by this senseless act of violence. rickey -- rikki old, mr. president, was 25 years old. rikki had been working as a manager at king's sooner for six -- sooper for six years. she lit up a room with her giggles. her aunt lori said she had a beautiful way of just being her. when you're down, she just wanted to cheer you up just by being around.

tralona barkoliva, age 49. she coowned a -- co-owned a clothing store with her sister. she had a deep curiosity about the world that took her on travels from nepal to costa rica. her younger brother remembers her as a beam of light. teri leiker, age 51. she was a huge fan of the buffaloes at c.u. a regular face at the pearl street stampede. a friend called teri the most selfless, innocent, amazing person i have had the honor of

meeting. suzanne fountain, 59 years old. she worked for 15 years in the bowled ircommunity hospital -- in the boulder community hospital. she loved gardening and was passionate about music and theater. a friend described her as the cream of the crop and a good person, a good soul. kevin mahoney, age 61. kevin had worked in the hotel business but retired early to spend more time traveling, skiing, and visiting his daughter erica. after learning of her father's death, erica wrote, my dad

represents all things loved. i'm so thankful he could walk me down the aisle last summer. lynn murray, age 62. lynn was a mother of two and retired photo director for a prominent national -- for prominent national magazines. her husband john said i just want her to be remembered as this amazing, amazing comet, spending 62 years flying across the sky. jody waters, 65 years old. jody owned -- used to own a

boutique clothing store on pearl street mall named applause where she knew all the customers and their favorite brands. she was a mother of two and a grandmother who loved horses and hiking. a friend said when jody walked into the room, she was a breath of fresh air, a light. finally, officer eric talley, 51 years old. he was a man of deep faith and a devoted father of seven. after losing a close friend to a d.u.i., he joined the police academy at age 40, just 11 years ago, to give back to the

community. in 2013 he made headlines when he helped rescue 11 ducklings from a drainage ditch. eric's father said he loved his kids and family more than anything. for their sake he was hoping to stay off the front lines by learning to become a drone operator, but when the bullets rang out, he rushed into action first on the scene saving countless lives at the cost of his own. officer talley and these other folks represent the best of

colorado. and we certainly owe officer talley a debt of gratitude we'll never be able to repay. mr. president, my heart goes out to all of the families in the -- and the entire community of boulder. we have endured too many tragedies as a state. so many other states are the same here. the shootings at columbine high school happened right before my oldest daughter was born, carol lynn ben bennet. she's 21 years old. and her entire generation has

grown up in the shadow of gun violence, something none of us had to do. i remember, mr. president, after a gunman in las vegas took the lives of 59 americans, that was a monday that i came to work and realized during the course of the day that i was having meeting after meeting after meeting and nobody was mentioning the massacre of 59 americans. i don't know if it was two or three or four of these events before that that we began to somehow accept this as normal, that you could lose that many people and not have a conversation about what had

happened. the headlines all moving on to the next thing. and we can't allow this to become normal, and it's not just the mass shootings, it's the daily shooting. the presiding officer and i talked about last week that had happened in atlanta over the last couple of weekends or on the west side of chicago. so we can't move on. boulder will heal but the scar will always be there my daughter's generation will always bear the burden of a national government that did nothing to protect them. they and the children that i

used to work for, the denver public schools, they carry a burden that we didn't carry. they have grown up with a reasonable fear that they will be shot in their classrooms or in their schools or a movie theater or in any public place. i didn't grow up in an america with more gun-related deaths than virtually any country in this world, and we can't accept it for their america. i'm not asking anybody here to show the courage that officer talley showed or the other men and women of law enforcement who constantly have to deal with the inability of this place's

capacity to deal with these issues. i'm just asking us to show just an ounce of their courage by doing whatever we can to keep weapons of war out of our communities, to pass universal background checks, to limit the size of magazines, to dress the epidemic crisis of mental health in this country. it seems like that would be the least that we could do. in the wake of one of these incidents, i heard somebody say on a radio program that this was just the price of freedom, that these murders are the price of

freedom. what a shame that somebody would say that and mean it. what a surrender that represents to our children and to the victims of these crimes. what a sacrifice of their right to be free from fear. who are we to insist that they live terrified in their own country? nobody insisted that we live that way, but our failure to act has helped create these conditions. and we can't wait any longer. the senate needs to act. there's nobody else to act but

the united states senate. i want to end by thanking my colleagues from connecticut, senator blumenthal and senator murphy for their incredible steadfast leadership for -- long before they came to the senate. but i remember as one of the darkest moments of my senate career the votes that we took after newtown when that elementary school, sandy hook, was shot up and 20 students were killed. and this senate couldn't even pass universal background checks. and they're here tonight to continue to make the case that we need to act, and i want to again thank them for their

resilience and for caring about the people that lived and died in colorado. i'm extremely grateful for their example. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. murphy: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: thank you, mr. president. i thank my friend, senator bennet, for those remarks for honoring the memories of those that we have lost and commanding us to action. i remember getting a phone call from michael bennet that friday morning as senator blumenthal and i were sitting at a firehouse in sandy hook, connecticut, learning what had happened just around the corner at a schoolhouse. i remember getting advice from michael bennet about what you do if you're an elected official in the midst of this tragedy because he had already been through it once before.

colorado had already been through it more than once before. i think about this macabre club that an increasing number of members of the senate and house belong to in which we have this memory bank of what to do when a mass shooting happens in your district or your state, a set of capacities that no member of the house or senate, no governor ever had to think about or ever consider possessing decades ago. and now we call each other when these things happen, in part advice on how to be helpful to communities that are grieving. i'm thankful to have friends like senator bennet who can be with others at mommies like this but i hate -- at moments like

this but i hate the fact that he knows all too well what communities go through when something happens like what happened earlier this week in boulder. mr. president, we thought about what to do to try to move this country and our colleagues to action after another spate of mass shootings. this is a really old chart that i brought down to the floor for years. these numbers are out of date, unfortunately, because -- well, in 2019 we were losing a hundred people a day to gun violence. that's not the number from 2020 or 2021. we've seen a dramatic increase in gun violence. and while in 2020 we didn't see the mass shootings that we have been accustomed to in years prior, we have now seen them once again pop up on our tv

screens in 2021. but the lack of mass shootings masks the reality which was a dramatic increase in the number of people who were felled by guns over the course of last year. so we thought about what we could do to try to make more real for our colleagues the scope of this epidemic, and we thought of maybe something simple to make people understand that these aren't really numbers, right. the numbers are just a way to explain in aggregate who these people are because each one of them is an individual, each one of them lead a life, each one of them had people who loved them, each one of them loved people, so many of them you could see by these snapshots were young. they had full lives ahead of them, businesses to start, families to begin. none of that happened for them because they were shot often at

the beginning or the peak of their early life. and so tonight i'm hopeful that i'll be joined by a number of my colleagues to do something simple, just to read into the record the permanent "congressional record" the names of those that have died, just in 2021. every single day there's over 100 people dying right now. i don't think america has ever seen this rate of gun violence, with the exception of wartime in our history. while we won't have time to tell you the story of all these people, as michael did, about those who were lost in boulder, at least we can make sure that forever their name and a link to their story is in the "congressional record". senator bennet already talked about lynn murray and suzanne

fountain, terri leiker, kevin mahoney, tralona bartkowiak, ricki olds, neven stanisic, denny strong, jody waters, eric talley. those are the victims from colorado. i'm sorry if i didn't get the pronunciations perfectly. but we also lost over the course of the first three months of this year patrice lynnette jones in indiana, kelvin darnell from illinois, kavon dickerson from kentucky, leah brook heinz from ohio, linda mcmurray in tennessee. michael utle, missouri. jodd gardener from pennsylvania.

mattox jones in georgia. joseph jackson in florida. on monday, same day as the shooting in boulder, alisia meskita, 28 years old was shot and killed in new haven, connecticut, with her one-year-old daughter sitting in the back seat of her car. she and her boyfriend were arguing in the car when he shot her to death. according to her mother, alyssia had been trying to leave her boyfriend. alyssia is described as a devoted mother who loved her children with all of her heart. many of her friends really relied on her for advice and guidance. they said she'd give the shirt off her back to help a friend.

her mom said, quote, my heart has been shattered and i don't think i'm ever going to be right again. she was the second of eight children. she had two children of her own. and her mother will now raise her two grandchildren. nobody heard about alyssia meskita being shot with her daughter in the back seat in new haven, connecticut, on monday. her life isn't any less valuable than any of those that were killed in mass shootings, but this country's attention to the pandemic of gun violence, the epidemic of gun violence, it seems to only surface when there is a mass shooting. benjamin baggily was shot last

week in bridgeport, connecticut. he was 22 years old. he was remembered by friends and family as somebody who always kept a smile on the faces of people who loved him. he was a doting father, he was a loving son and brother, always made people smile. he was taken from us far before his light was fully able to shine its brightest, his friends wrote. he was one of six siblings, two brothers and four sisters. he had two children and one on the way. he was born and raised in bridgeport. he was involved in his church. his mom, michelle brown, said i had to kiss my son lying in a hospital bed dead. i don't wish this on nobody. not even my worst enemy. this wasn't the first time benjamin had been shot. he had been previously wounded in a shooting in 2016, but he

had recovered. kevin xiang was 26 years old. about a month and a half ago, in early february he was killed by gun violence. he had moved to new haven just two years ago to pursue a master's degree at the yale school of the environment. he was a west coast native. he had gotten engaged one week before his death. he had earned a degree. he was an army veteran, he was a present army national guard member. he was shot outside his fiancee 's apartment. his fiancee said kevin was a gift from god. he was a true and righteous man after god's own heart. life is so precious and short. my only hope is that he's with

his heavenly father now in perfect peace, an extraordinary young man said yale university's president. i mean, mr. president, i've got a stack of names, 20, 25 per page. we don't have enough time tonight to just read into the record the number of the victims of gun violence in 2021 alone. alone. adam todd sayed in south carolina, andrew wesley from ohio, antonio thompson from south carolina, atrell louisiana, bo michael wasmer west virginia. brittany wagner moore in ohio.

byron denell, texas. carolyn ann stevenson north carolina. christopher best, illinois. david cavilero. dean wagstaff washington. delawrence reyes, california. gloria dean eddington lewis ohio. harold dennisonwest virginia. keldrick love, louisiana. lashann long, illinois. malcolm fits, illinois. mario vines, oklahoma. pedro did he elg -- delgado texas. brian abraham, minnesota.

shamso abdey, minnesota. theresa ratliff, ohio. tony nickels, mo missouri. adam david lawrence, bobby king, brandon chunko. christian joseph jones, christopher benton mccloud, corey mcaffee. deandray carter. denell hoskin, grayson babbs. two pages, i've got two more here. my colleagues will hopefully join me on the floor tonight to read some of these names into the record. this is, as as ston --

astonishing as it is heartbreaking this country allows for this to happen, allows for these individuals to effectively be nameless, to be anonymous. tonight we're only reading into the record the names of individuals who died in this year, and this year isn't even 90 days old. how is it that we pay attention during the mass shootings but just sleep through the days in which all of these people are stolen from us through an epidemic that is preventable. this doesn't happen anywhere else in the high-income world. no other nation permits this level of gun violence. don't tell me it's the price of admission to america. don't tell me it's not preventable. don't tell me it's inevitable. it only happens here. it only happens here. and it's really hard to comprehend the impact that this has on people. i was in a elementary school in

baltimore, maryland, about two years ago. i had gone there to see an after-school program that i had heard was very successful. school had started about an hour late that day because of a weather delay, and so when i was inside the school at about 10:00, kids were still just arriving. i went upstairs to join the young lady who ran this program, and we were about a half an hour into our conversation when buzzers started going off, and the lights flickered, and the intercom system lit up with somebody from the central office repeating over and over again, code green, code green, code green, code green. i didn't know what code green was. the person i was meeting with who was just running this after-school program didn't know what code green was. luckily the front office called up and told us that code green

means there's been an active shooting somewhere in and around the school and that everybody needs to turn the lights off, lock the doors, shut the blinds. and so that's what we did. it was 10:30 in the morning. after about 20 minutes, code green ended, the lights turned back on, we continued our discussion. i was shaken. this is a school i had never set foot in. i had only about there for about 20 minutes, and there was an active shooting within a handful of blocks. and so i wanted to know what happened. i stayed in touch with personnel at the school. i read the baltimore papers over the course of the next few days to find out what had happened, and here's what i found out. a young man by the name of corey dodds who lives just down the street from the school had told his wife, i believe her name is marissa, if i remember

correctly, that he dropped their twins offer at matthew henson elementary school that morning. they had two other kids, she was busy with them. he said i'll drop the kids off this morning. and so he drove the kids to matthew henson elementary school, the twin girls, brought them into the building. i could have been in that lobby with him that morning as i was coming in and he was leaving. he got into his car, he drove a few blocks home, and in between his car and the door he was shot dead at 10:00 in the morning. his little girl, the youngest, always waited for him at the door when he was arriving. well, he never showed up to that door because he died that day. and these two little twin girls in that school at the same time that i was who might have been giggling as they took a break from instruction and the lights went off and they got to chat with their friends didn't know

that they were never going to see their father again. think about how the lives of those children changed when your dad vanishes from the earth just like that. think about how the lives of all the children in that school change when they have to contemplate the fact that their dads might not be home when they arrive next week or the week after, if it could happen to mr. dodds. think about how the entire neighborhood goes through trauma after trauma when that happens so routinely in a place like baltimore. you can't understand the scope of this epidemic by just reading off these names. adam todd said died. jason wilson died. jaff burns died. john brito died. johnny clark died. jose madero died. joseph carney died. justin locklear died.

christian slack died of gun violence and so did lieutenant justin birdwell, they all died of gunshot wounds just in 2021, but they represent the surface. you scratch just a bit and you will find their kids and their moms and their dads and their neighbors who are going through trauma right now because of their death. research tells us that someone -- when someone close to them dies. even the names we read into the record don't recognize the scope of this trauma. those kids' lives will never ever be same in samtown where this elementary school sits. neither will be the lives of the kids who go to that school. and maybe what was so inexplicable to me was that i had to work really hard to find

out anything about that young man. it was barely a story the next day that he had died bringing his daughters to school and then returning home. had there been six more people shot, maybe it would have made the papers. maybe america would have paid attention. but think of it this way. what if that same story played out, not in baltimore, md, with an african american father and african american girls, what if that story played out in westport, connecticut, with a white father and two twin blond-haired white girls, do we care less because cory was african american? you better believe it. you better believe that headline news would have been running

stories about an affluent white suburban father dropping his kids off at an affluent white school being shot. we don't care about individual losts like we do about mass shooting. we also don't care about the loss of black life. we don't care about the people of color who died in the same way we care when white people die in this country. that's just the truth. so tonight my colleagues and i are going to come to the floor, and i hope some will join me. i thank senator blumenthal for being here to start us off. to read into the record the names of individuals who have been lost to gun violence in 2021. as a way to, you know, make sure we recognize who they are and the lives that they led, but

also as a last-gasp effort to try to convince our colleagues to do something. tonight isn't really going to be the night to go deep into policy. senator bennet talked about what we know we need to do. we can have that debate at another time. tonight's a night to just recognize the scope of this epidemic, how many people are being lost, how many lives are being impacted in mass shootings and in individual acts of violence, in homicides, suicides, and domestic violence incidences. and maybe -- maybe by pounding into people's brains that the human toll of this tragedy in mass shootings and in forms, we can inch this body a little bit closer to doing the right thing. i yield the floor.

mr. blumenthal: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: i'm honored to follow my colleagues, senators murphy and bennet, two fellow champions of this cause again -- again. we have stood here so many times to advocate for measures that very simply would make americans safer and i don't accept it will be our last gasp. i don't accept that we will ever go away, that we will ever abandon this cause no matter how long and how hard it is.

senator murphy and i were in sandy hook the afternoon of that massacre. we lived through an excruciatingly heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, stunning experience but nothing compared to the children who were taken out of the school. nothing compared to the teachers who shepherded them. nothing compared to anyone who lived through it or the emergency spoanders who had -- responders who had to see the sea of carnage that day, and, of course, nothing approaching the trauma of parents and loved ones. so our club, as he called it, is

one that pales in significance to the club of survivors and victims. it is more than the names we read tonight. it is the children who take cover when that code is rung, it is the teachers who suffer the apprehension of wondering whether that day will be the one when there is a shooter. it is the parents of all children who send their kids to school and wonder whether at the end of the day they will see them again. at some level. maybe not all. maybe not always. not every day, but that fear in the gut, that powerfully important apprehension is there for many. when i was in elementary school,

the fear was of nuclear annihilation, and the drills we did were to dive beneath our desks as though somehow those desks could be protective in the midst of a nuclear attack. absurd as it seems looking back, every one of us during those years wondered would that be the day and on the days before the cuban missile crisis, it became more real than ever. and for that generation, it was the fear. for this generation, gun violence is the fear that lurks constantly in the heart, in the back of the mind and always a

presence. the names that we're going to read tonight are a very partial list of the injuries because we're reading the ones who died, but many others were injured severely and who horrifically, s shattered, flesh torn, futures changed forever. and, of course, the emotional trauma of living through it. but we have to read these names because it is part of our responsibility to make them real and to remind ourselves, as much as begin, that this issue is a matter of life and death in a way that few others that we debate in this chamber.

at the beginning of the judiciary committee hearing the other day, just this week, we had a moment of silence but we cannot be silent. yes, we will offer thoughts and prayers but we cannot be silent and we must do more than speak. we must act. honor with action. we cannot let these brave, wonderful souls go gently into this good night. we must rage -- rage against the dying of the light, and that is what we're doing by reading these names, reminding ourselves that we cannot accept these deaths as a normal even with the pandemic receding, we hope,

epidemic of gun violence continues. and a gun, a firearm, especially an assault weapon, makes fatal and irreversible some of the most serious problems, whether it's domestic violence, suicide, or simply a profoundly disturbed young man walking into a grocery store or a racist and misogynist man going into a spa. involvement of guns and firearms makes those incidents deadly. and the names that i will read

will be of all ethnicities and religions and backgrounds and races because firearms can be an equal opportunity killer. but senator murphy is right, that communities of color suffer disproportionately and in atlanta who can doubt that a hate crime turned deadly potentially because of that gun. dominic boston, brad keel, eliko pap, james ray huddleson, glen is ton, ethan delicate, paula

marie booth, raymond robinson, allana ashley yawn, eeon fung, chigo ton, yugo eu, paul avendre michael. last week eight lives were taken by gun violence and they should be remembered and their lives recounted. delana ashley yawn, was a 33-year-old newlywed and mother of two, including a daughter she gave birth to this summer. she put her family above all else and cared for family

members and friends who needed help or a place to stay during tough times. her manager said, quote, her heart was so big, she loved people, end quote. he describes how she would feed diners at the restaurant where she worked who were homeless and bring them home to offer them showers and clean clothes. one friend described delaina as a, quote, light. she just made everybody happy. she loves to smile and joke and hang out with her kids and make sure they always had fun. she was a happy person. daoyou was a hardworking and

loving single mother of two who loved karaoke, dancing, and made the world's best stew. one of her sons wrote, she was a single mother who dedicated her whole life to providing for my brother and i. it is only my brother and i in the united states. she was one of my best friends and the strongest influence on who we are today. daoyo feng was 44 years old. what we know from her friends is that she was sweet and kind. that was how she was described by her coworkers as well. soon chung park was an active mother and mother-in-law.

she lived in atlanta. she moved there several years ago to be closer to friends and she was well on her way to living past 100. because of the pandemic, she missed chances to visit her family in the northeast but was planning to move back this summer to be closer to relatives an friends. her son-in-law described that soon, quote, just liked to work. it wasn't for the money. she wanted a little bit of work for her life. suncha kim, 69 years old. she was married for more than 50 years and she was a fighter and a rock for her two children and three grandchildren. she was a hard worker and enjoyed line dancing. suncha came to the united states around 1980. she spoke little english and

worked two to three jobs putting her children first and always seeking to help others. she volunteered by cooking and fund raising. one of her grandchildren wrote, my grandmother was an angel. as an immigrant, all my grandmother ever wanted in life was to grow old with my grandfather and watch her children and grand children live the life she never got to live. another killed that day before her 50 birthday. she was a dedicated wife, mother, friend. she was devoted to her job and dedicated to her fellow employees. her husband said that, quote, she donated and gave money to her employees and treated them so well. she was always celebrating their

birthdays, doing good things for them. end of quote. she was curious, hardworking, and caring, always filled with joy. she worked long hours every day to give her family a better life. her daughter said that xiaojie was her best friend and that she, quote, did everything for me and the family. she provided everything, end quote. i don't think yue, 63 -- yong yue, age 63. she was an amazing mother of two sons and loved to cook korean food. she came to the united states in president 1970's and after being laid off during the pandemic, she was glad to be back to work. she loved watching movies and soap operas and reading. she always loved to read and have her dog at her side.

paul andre michels, a 54-year-old army veteran, one of nine children and he'd been married for more than 20 years. he loved to fish and collect rare coins. he treated everyone like he was their uncle. he did what he could to help others. one friend said of paul that, quote, he would give you the shirt off his back. his younger brother john said he'd loan you money if you needed it sometimes. you never went away from his place hungry. my home state of connecticut is not immune to gun violence. sandy hook is the best known of the tragedies but there are others, many, many, many others. around the state in big cities, in small towns, in rural areas,

suburban, nobody is immune nobody is protected against gun violence so long as the pipeline, the iron pipeline, even with connecticut's strong laws, draws guns across state borders. here are some of the names and stories of people whose lives have been taken in connecticut. jack walters was killed on september 19, 2020 in hartford. he was 24 years old. his mother, trician writes, and i quote, there was an altercation with someone inside a store. the fight was broken up but the other young man still shot him. and then stood over him a second

time, shot him again. he was a college graduate. he was known as a big basketball player for al better takes making -- albertas magnus. he played overseas for two seasons before covid hit. my son saw a lot of gun violence growing up in the city and he became victim to it, even though he tried his best to beat all the odds with a bachelor degree in communication. he even played in argentina as a professional basketball player, mentored kids through basketball. he got a proclamation from his work at the parker memorial center and the village where he worked with troubled kids. end of quote. ju quan coach at magnus

described him as, quote, the kind of kid who got along with everyone. his likability crossed every age generation. when i ran a camp, 18-year-old kids instantly, he was the guy. they all gravitate toward him. same thing with our team. they loved him. opponents loved him. i've gotten a lot of texts and i got one from a northeast coach who said, he had that thing. he had that thing where he dropped 30 points on you and every opponent, not only respected him but genuinely liked him. another coach said jack was very, very rooted in the hartford community. and he loved his town.

so he was always going to be one of those people that came back and gave as much as he was able. another said -- another coach, he had such a great impact. the guy had so muscle more -- so much more to give. that is the story of every one of these victims, so much more to give, so much more to give back whether to hartford or sons or daughters who are parents. ethat song -- ethan song was killed this gil gillford on jany 31, 2018. 12 days after his 15th birthday. with an unsecured firearm in his neighbor's house.

he lived a life with laughter, adventure, and passion. he lived with adoring family members. kristin and michael song. ethan loved to ski and hike and play spike ball, too. he helped his mom kristin in finding homes for abandoned puppies. ethan loved food. he and his dad, mike, ventured to find the best lobster roll in new england. they sampled 15 locations. he loved lacrosse and he was good at it making the all-star team one season. he was always interested in his family's history. he tried to learn all that he could about his grandmother's

experience as a holocaust survivor. and went so far as to divert a family trip to the u.k. to see the ann frank house in the netherlands. ethan was also fascinated by his grandfather's experience as a decorated intelligence officer in the korean war. i'm always so inspired by kristin and michael song and ethan's sister. their strength and courage, their joy in life, and their unquenchable loyalty and love for ethan. i've stood on the green in g

gilford announcing my introduction of ethan's law, a safe storage law which they have championed with grace and dignity and power beyond words. and let's say it out loud. this gun violence is every parent's worst nightmare. every parent's worst fear. going to school, going to a neighbor's house, going to a grocery store. wrong place at the wrong time. a make's house where -- a neighbor's house where a firearm was unsafely stored. watching the emergency response team pull to that neighbor's house and knowing something is

terribly, terribly wrong. every parent's worst nightmare. and glory jackson's parents know very graphically about that nightmare because their daughter laurie jackson of oxford, connecticut, came to their house seeking refuge from an estranged husband and that night while her infant children slept, laurie jackson was gunned down by that husband who was under a protective order which should have barred his having a firearm but at that point, connecticut law applied only to permanent

protective orders. she was killed by that man even though he was under that protective order. she was 32 years old, a loving daughter and mother of twins and her mother also was severely injured. and her parents with that same grace and dignity and strength and courage have championed protection for domestic violence victims at survivors. she had so much to give like ethan, like so many others. and we remember know would -- noaa, charlotte, jack, katherine, jessica, james, josephine, caroline, benjamin, chase, anna, grace, emily,

madeleine, allison, daniel, jesse, 20 beautiful innocent children taken at sandy hook elementary school in newtown. more than eight years ago. we remember them for bringing bursts of light and laughter into the lives of their family and friends. for bringing love into the lives of all who knew them and for their joy and bounceless energy. only six years old but they had so much to give and their lives cut short at sandy hook that day. and we remember the heroism of those brave, courageous edu educators that december morning,

victoria, lauren, ann marie, rachel, mary, and dawn. we remember their courage. some of them physically shielding students with their own bodies, running unhesitating toward danger. barricading classrooms. drawing on all their reserves of calm and professionalism to protect and shield the children in their care. we read these names i feel almost as a form of prayer. we cannot save any of these victims, but we know we can save others, and that is our work.

as john f. kennedy said in his inaugural speech, here on earth god's work must truly be our own. thank -- thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from nevada. ms. cortez masto: thank you. i rise today to join my colleagues. at this juncture it is hard to find the words. how many more shootings, how many more individuals have to die before we take action? and i rise because my senator colleague, the great senator

from connecticut identifying these names as a form of prayer, which i could not have said that better because this is about recognizing those we've lost in order to prevent future loss of life. so i join them to recognize individuals across the country and in my home state of nevada who have lost their lives. vincent brown of colorado. zanier bell of new jersey. anthony stanley of missouri. bayo yang, minnesota. daisy navarette from texas. david kamacho, rhode island. deanta minor, washington, d.c. ronald b. williams from indiana. all of these individuals were

killed by gun violence. and just those names would be too many, yet they represent a few in a heartbreakingly long list of victims, families, and communities whose lives have been ripped apart by senseless gun violence just this year. sadly my home state of nevada has been no stranger to this pain. in las vegas on october 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on a crowd of thousands of people at the route 91 harvest music festival. he killed 58 people that night. two more victims have since died from injuries they received that evening, and hundreds, hundreds more were injured. people who just wanted to enjoy an evening of celebration with

their friends and family. i know the fear and the trauma that so many families experienced that day. my niece was at that concert, and my family and i, we are incredibly grateful that she made it home safely. but i will never forget, never forget on that monday after the horrific shooting that took place, sitting at the reconciliation center in las vegas with the families, with the parents, the uncles, the aunts, the siblings who remember waiting to find out what happened to their loved one. can you imagine? it is the most horrific thing any family member could go through. you're waiting to hear what

happened to your family member, your child, your son, daughter, your niece, your nephew, your father, your mother. and you're hoping that as time and the clock ticks away that your child is not one that is in the back room with a coroner right now. and i cannot tell you how heart breaking it was to be with those families and talking to them, and the fear and the anxiety and the helplessness and the hope that still they clung to that they would find out that their child or their brother or their mother or sister was really safe somewhere in one of

the hospitals in las vegas. no one can imagine that, and no one should have to imagine that. and no one should ever have to go through that. but that's what families and loved ones have been going through over the years because of the senseless gun violence that is happening across this country. every day more than 100 families lose a loved one to gun violence austin cooper meyer, age 24 from sparks, nevada. brennan lee stewart, age 30 from north las vegas. cameron lee robinson, age 28 from las vegas. charleston hartfield, age 34 from henderson, nevada; a

police officer. eric steven silva, age 21 from las vegas. laura ann shipp age 50 from las vegas. niesha tonks from las vegas. quintin age 20 from henderson. those are just eight of the 60 americans who lost their lives during the route harvest festival in las vegas on october 1. and their names and stories will stick with us forever. but we also have to remember the loved ones they left behind. so many of these names, i know

now not just because of the horrific shooting, but because i have met their family members that they've left behind, children that were left behind, children that lost their parent to this horrific gunfire, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. it just goes on and on and on. in the next few minutes i want to share some stories of nevadans whose lives have been altered by gun violence. many of these stories are heartbreaking, and they stem from the october 1 mass shooting which took place in las vegas. before i talk about them, however, i have to also recognize and praise the many heroes who stood up and worked to protect our community that night. after the bullets stopped raining down on the las vegas

strip, a former marine turned a truck into a makeshift ambulance and drove more than two dozen people to one of our hospitals. a couple provided c.p.r. to injured victims on the site. and hundreds of concert goers risked their lives carrying fellow concert goers to safety. in fact, many younger attendees already had a sense of what to do to stop the bleeding from bullet holes and knew to run for safety in the breaks in between the sounds of gunshots because of training they had received in their schools and workplaces. but after the shooting, i received a letter from a constituent who survived the las vegas shooting, and she wrote, on october 1, 2017, our life

was forever changed. my husband and i attended the route 91 harvest festival. we were having the time of our lives, enjoying the different bands we got to see and singing along with all of our favorite songs. my husband and i were so moved when one of the bands led the audience singing "god bless america." who would have known that just a few hours later our lives would be changed forever. when the shooting started, i thought it was firecrackers. we looked around, and then there were more shots. my husband pulled me to the ground, laying on top of me, shielding me from the gunfire. he laid there tense, waiting to be shot while i lay there waiting for him to go limp. we prayed and told each other that we loved one another. i prayed we would live to see our children raise their children, and i felt jesus' hands covering us.

during a pause in the shooting, my husband pulled me up to start running. i was terrified because we could hear bullets whizzing by, and we could smell gun powder. there were three people that i know of who were shot right around us. the shooting continued for what felt like forever. we continued running and ran across las vegas buferld while the shooting -- boulevard while the shooting continued. there was so much confusion, and we didn't know if there were more shooters. by the grace of god, my husband and i are unharmed physically. our emotional scars are still to be determined. sleeping has been difficult. i've had periods of uncontrollable shaking. i have chronic stomach pains and have difficulty eating. all of this seems trivial compared to the families who have lost mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, and the

hundreds of people still suffering with physical injuries. now i read that letter because it is not just, as i said before, about the lives that we've lost, but it's about the lives who are affected by gun violence. reading that letter is just heart breaking. and to think that her trauma is experienced by so many other americans, from las vegas, from parkland, from orlando, and from boulder. it is a stain on our nation. and i have since that shooting been able to meet so many incredible survivors of the shooting, including two sisters, the marano sisters, who were at the concert that night and are still living with

the emotional scars from being there in that horrific shooting. gina marano has learned to prepare herself for independence day and new year's eve when the sound of fireworks can sound eerily similar to gunfire. but if a car backfires unexpectedly, she has to start the process of reminding herself, you're safe, it's okay, don't worry. and her sister marissa who was also at the festival says her own daughter has picked up the habit of reacting to loud noises. she said it breaks my heart because my trauma has now passed on to her. the fear resurfaces for these sisters in so many situations -- on anniversaries, including of all the shootings since then, at high schools where gina was doing outreach to students and

feared that she was putting herself at risk of another shooting. passing the strip, eerily during the covid pandemic, like it was on the day of the festival because the strip was shut down. anywhere where there is darkness and music, even on an evening out, the sisters still feel the repercussions of that night at the concert. and they are not alone. while the tragedy of the route 91 shooting may be three years behind us, for many survivors, the moment -- excuse me -- a moment can bring it all roaring back, and many more live in fear that it could happen again. telamacus grafanos, a survivor of the route 91 harvest festival

shooting was killed when a gunman entered the border line bar and grill and shot 12 innocent people on november 7, 2018. what happened to telamachus and other one october survivors in the restaurant that night was a uniquely american phenomenon that we should not be proud of. we keep having these mass shootings in our country, and it is past time that we act. it's not only what our nation deserves, it's what these families and these survivors and those who lost their lives deserve. the nevadan who shared her 1 october experience with me ended her letter by stating, i am urging you to pass thoughtful, reasonable controls that will enhance the safety of our

society. it is time to take action to protect our mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends. please do not sit back and do nothing. and she's right. we cannot sit back and do nothing. we must pass commonsense gun legislation, like universal background checks that we have passed in the state of nevada. that will help keep americans safe. we owe it to our friends and families and all of the victims who have already been irrevocably marked by gun violence to take action. thank you, mr. president. mr. murphy: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from