In Wake of Uvalde Massacre, Duckworth Pleads with Colleagues to Save Children’s Lives By Suspending Filibuster Rule and Passing Commonsense Gun Safety Reforms
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] — One day after 19 children and two teachers were murdered in yet another preventable school shooting, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) came to the Senate floor to beg her colleagues to suspend the chamber’s filibuster rule to pass overdue, obvious and commonsense gun safety legislation that the majority of Americans support and that could prevent countless future massacres. A mother of two daughters, Duckworth spoke of the fear that parents across the country experience every day sending their children to school knowing the unspeakable tragedies that regularly occur in classrooms nationwide. In her speech, she addressed her Republican colleagues directly, urging them to prove they care more about our country’s children than the gun lobby’s checkbook by passing reforms that would help ensure that AR-15-styled weapons meant for battlefields can no longer terrorize elementary school classrooms. Video of the Senator’s speech is available here.
Key quotes:
“As a mother, I am beyond angry. I am furious, heartbroken and fed up. I am sick to my stomach thinking about what those parents are feeling right now. They sent off their children to school yesterday morning just like I did. … But unlike my daughters, those babies will never come home again. They will never laugh their beautiful laughs again. They will never smile their wide, silly, gorgeous smiles again. That is a hell on earth I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”
“As a Senator, I ask my colleagues: How many more children will you allow to be murdered on your watch? How many more? How many more tiny bodies have to be ripped apart by weapons of war before you will stand up to the gun lobby and the NRA? How many more children will you allow to go to school each day traumatized, fearing for their lives? Children terrified of being gunned down in their classrooms, practicing active shooter drills instead of studying their ABCs and 123s. When will it be enough for you to do something? Anything? To simply do. Your. Job. When will children’s lives matter more than your check from the gun lobby? When?”
“We know how to stop these attacks from happening as often as they do. Heck, the entire rest of the world has figured it out. We all know there will be another and another and another attack in the weeks and months ahead. If we do nothing, more innocent lives will undoubtedly be lost. So if you’re not willing to act, if you’re not willing to do the most basic part of your job to prevent the senseless loss of innocent life, then again, I ask, why are you here?”
Duckworth’s full remarks as delivered are below:
Last night, as I was doom-scrolling as they say one does at two in the morning when you can’t sleep, what I was looking up were places to buy ballistic protective backpacks for my daughters, who are 4 and 7.
Places to buy ballistic protective whiteboards that could be donated to my girls’ school that would act as a shield should an active shooter come to their school.
And it’s bad enough that I had felt that I had to do that. But the fact of the matter is, those pages were already bookmarked. Because it’s not the first time that I’ve had to look them up.
Ten days. 240 hours. Less than two weeks. That’s all it took.
It took just 10 days from the racially motivated domestic terrorism attack in Buffalo before we had to mourn the loss of yet more Americans, this time 19 babies and two teachers to a senseless, horrific and importantly preventable mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Children gunned down at their school.
Their small bodies mangled, utterly destroyed by lethal weapons of war, designed to quickly kill adults.
So last night when I got home, I held onto my two babies so tightly. They don’t know why, but I wasn’t going to let them go. Just so grateful that they came home from school.
Today there are at least 19 more families in our country that will never be able to forget the horrific sight of what happens to a baby’s body—to a child’s body when shot at close range with an AR-15 or similarly-styled rifle meant for battlefields and not schools.
I come to the floor today because as a mother, I am beyond angry. I am furious. heartbroken and fed up.
I am sick to my stomach thinking about what those parents are feeling right now. They sent off their babies to school yesterday morning just like I did. They packed a lunch like I did. They argued with their babies about, “Hurry up the bus is coming, you’re gonna miss the bus.” “No, you really do have to wear a sweater. I know that you don’t think it’s cold but you have to wear a sweater,” or, “Today’s PE day you have to wear your tennis shoes.”
But unlike my daughters, those babies never came home again. They will never laugh their beautiful laughs again. They will never smile their wild, silly, gorgeous smiles again.
That is a hell on earth. I wouldn’t wish on my worth it my worst enemy.
And as a Senator, I ask my colleagues, how many more children will you allow to be murdered on your watch?
How many more?
How many more tiny bodies have to be ripped apart by weapons of war before you will stand up to the gun lobby and the NRA?
How many more children will you allow to go to school each day traumatized, fearing for their lives? Children terrified of being gunned down in their classrooms, practicing active shooter drills instead of studying their ABCs and 123s.
When will it be enough for you to do something? Anything? To simply do. Your. Job.
When will children’s lives matter more than your check from the gun lobby? When?
Last night, my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Murphy, came to the floor to ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, quote, “What are we doing?”
But my Republican colleagues know exactly what they’re doing. They know exactly what they’re risking …whose lives they’re endangering… when they refuse to lift a finger in the wake of yet another mass shooting.
When the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire, the number of mass shooting deaths tripled—tripled. We know that the ban works and we need to reinstate it.
Republicans are, yet again, pushing for nothing to be done. Falling back on the old line that “only one thing stops a bad guy with a gun—and that is a good guy with a gun.”
Knowing full well, that there were good guys with guns at both Uvalde and Buffalo, and here we are mourning dozens of lives anyway.
And I’ve even heard some of them say, “Let’s equip the teachers with guns.” I would rather equip teachers with more pieces of chalk and more learning tools than guns, because even if those teachers had a gun in the classroom, they didn’t have a chance to react to go grab that gun. And they’re dead today.
They pretend like all we can do is send thoughts and prayers, or they say it’s too soon to talk about politics. But they know that we don’t have any time to wait. This time we didn’t even have 10 days to wait from Buffalo.
It is their job to do more than send thoughts and prayers.
It is their job, our job, to prove that we care even the least little bit about those little bodies and the giant heartbreaks they leave behind.
We know how to stop these attacks from happening as often as they do. Heck, the entire rest of the world has figured it out.
We all know there will be another and another and another attack in the weeks and months ahead. If we do nothing more innocent lives will undoubtedly be lost.
So if you’re not willing to act, if you’re not willing to do the most basic part of your job to prevent the senseless loss of innocent life, then again, I ask, why are you here?
The Senate should immediately—at a 50-vote threshold—vote on the commonsense gun safety reforms that the American people have demanded for so long.
And don’t tell me this is about the filibuster, because we have time and again voted at the 50-vote threshold on things that matter like raising the debt ceiling, or the defense budget, and yet the lives of our babies, the right of our babies to not be torn apart by weapons meant for war. It’s not worthy of that?
We’re talking about universal background checks. We’re talking about the kind of reforms that widespread majorities of Americans support and in the face of yet another moment of an unimaginable, unbearable, unfathomable grief.
Let’s show the nation that we value children’s lives more than an arcane Senate procedure rule.
Let’s do what adults are supposed to do: let’s protect our kids—the most vulnerable, the most innocent.
Let’s do our jobs. Let’s do what we were sent here to do, what our children are depending on us to do.
We owe it to each victim of this tragedy and every tragedy before it and their loved ones to finally act. Enough was enough. A very, very long time ago.
May those babies rest in peace, those little angels. Now in heaven.
I yield the floor.
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