00:00Mr. President, we don't have to fight over everything here.
00:14It's okay if occasionally we find consensus around common-sense things that we could do
00:21together to keep our country safe.
00:27I kind of thought we had consensus on at least the idea that civilians shouldn't be
00:37able to get their hands on machine guns.
00:40I understand there's differences between Republicans and Democrats on AR-15s that maybe not all
00:48my Republican colleagues think that everybody should go through a background check before
00:51they buy a gun.
00:52But I thought we were all in agreement that fully automatic weapons were too dangerous
01:02to be in the hands of civilians.
01:06That these are unquestionably weapons of war.
01:10They are designed for mass slaughter and you just do not need a weapon that allows you
01:20to fire hundreds of rounds per minute in order to hunt, in order to protect your home, in
01:30order to shoot for sport.
01:34But apparently, Mr. President, we do not have consensus on the question of whether Americans
01:41should have access to machine gun technology.
01:45Because earlier today, Senator Heinrich, a gun owner, somebody that knows a lot about
01:50weapons, came to the floor to ask for consent that we make sure that civilians can't get
01:59their hands on a device called a bump stock that allows you to convert a semi-automatic
02:06weapon into a machine gun.
02:08That's effectively what a bump stock does.
02:10It allows you to change a semi-automatic weapon, which you have to pull the trigger
02:16in order to fire each round, into an automatic weapon in which one physical pull of the finger
02:24allows you to fire multiple rounds.
02:27It effectively gives you access to an automatic weapon.
02:36I thought that we all agreed that automatic weapons, machine guns, should be in the hands
02:48of the military.
02:51I especially thought we all agreed on that after what happened in Las Vegas.
02:58On October 1st, 2017, a gunman opened fire on a concert from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay
03:09Bay Hotel, 500 yards between that gunman on the 32nd floor and those innocent concert
03:22goers.
03:25That gunman fired about 1,100 rounds, killing 58 people, 58 people, and wounding 500.
03:47When we think about the Las Vegas tragedy, we focus on that number, 58 people.
03:51That's a stunning number of people to die in an instant.
03:55We don't talk about the 500 people who were injured, many of them with injuries that changed
04:01their lives forever.
04:03Everyone, whether they were injured or not, dealing with trauma that impacted their lives
04:08forever.
04:111,100 rounds fired from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel.
04:19You know how long it took him to get off 1,100 rounds?
04:26Eleven minutes.
04:28Eleven minutes.
04:31That gunman was able to fire around 90 shots every 10 seconds.
04:39Why?
04:40Because he had taken a bump stock and converted a semi-automatic weapon, turning it effectively
04:47into an automatic weapon.
04:55Even Donald Trump, the biggest backer of the NRA and the gun lobby that has ever been in
05:02the White House, knew that something had to change.
05:07He put forward a regulation to ban bump stocks, and most of my Republican colleagues celebrated
05:14that change.
05:15I don't remember many of them opposing it.
05:22This month, the Supreme Court, packed with pro-gun lobby justices, most of which selected
05:32by Donald Trump, ruled that that regulation was unconstitutional.
05:37I think they got it wrong.
05:39I think they absolutely got it wrong.
05:42I think if you look at the plain reading of the statute, bump stocks are illegal.
05:49And the regulation proffered by the Trump administration should have been ruled as constitutional.
05:54But Trump's appointees thought otherwise.
05:58They bought the argument of the gun lobby, and they ruled that bump stocks could once
06:06again be sold commercially in this country.
06:10And so we thought that it'd be an easy case to make to our colleagues that, having seen
06:17the regulation proffered by the Trump administration be ruled unconstitutional, having been offered
06:23by the Supreme Court the chance to fix that statutorily, that we could get to that business
06:27this week.
06:28But we are not.
06:29Because Republicans objected to our efforts to try to pass into law a ban on bump stocks,
06:35to try to take away from psychopaths and madmen the technology that allows them to
06:42turn an automatic weapon on crowds of concertgoers and get off 1,000-plus rounds in a 10-minute
06:52period of time.
06:58What Republicans in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives are doing
07:02on a regular basis is facilitating the mass slaughter of Americans, handing to individuals
07:13whose brains are breaking the tools of mass slaughter, refusing to do the easy, popular,
07:23common-sense things to just make it a little bit harder for 58 people to be gunned down,
07:28or 500 people to be injured in a 10-minute period of time.
07:34No law that we pass will end gun homicides in this country.
07:38No law that we pass will completely eliminate mass shootings.
07:46But there simply are technologies, like the bump stock, that turn a mass shooting in which
07:55five or ten people might have died into a 58-person slaughter.
08:04It is just true that when you have a weapon like an AR-15, or you have a converted semi-automatic
08:11weapon with a bump stock, that the slaughter is worse, that more people die.
08:18Why on earth would we choose to hand to these killers weapons that are designed for one
08:30purpose and one purpose only?
08:32Mass slaughter.
08:33You do not need a bump stock in order to protect your home.
08:39You do not need a machine gun in order to hunt for sport.
08:45The only reason you need a bump stock is to engage in mass murder.
09:00I take this personally because I have lived through an experience of mass slaughter, as
09:11has the presiding officer.
09:15I did not lose a loved one, but I have come to know those families from Sandy Hook like
09:21they are family.
09:23And I know there is never ever getting over losing a loved one, frankly, whether it be
09:32to a gun death by suicide or by mass slaughter.
09:36But it makes it harder to deal with the loss of a loved one in a mass killing when you
09:44know the people that you elect to positions of high office had the power to prevent the
09:52slaughter or at least prevent it from being as bad as it was and they chose to do nothing.
09:59Now Republicans complain that this was a political stunt.
10:07What about everything that Joe Biden has said and done?
10:12What about the efforts that Senate Democrats have undertaken would suggest that we aren't
10:18sincere in our desire to prevent unnecessary gun deaths?
10:27We have over and over again acted in good faith to try to find bipartisan compromise
10:32around changing the gun laws of this nation.
10:37Joe Biden has shown absolute sincerity in his desire to try to keep more people alive.
10:44This is not a gotcha unanimous consent request.
10:50This is a real attempt to effectuate what we thought was a consensus that people shouldn't
10:57have access to machine gun technology in this country.
11:02Senate Republicans could have agreed to work with us.
11:06They could make an offer today to expedite consideration of this bill next week.
11:15And so the only political decision that is being made here is by Republicans who are
11:21opposing a bill that is undoubtedly supported by the mass majority of Americans.
11:32So if this wasn't the way that Republicans wanted to do this, then I'm open to other
11:37offers because we have passed bipartisan legislation to save lives.
11:46There are Republicans who have joined us, most recently on the Bipartisan Safer Communities
11:51Act.
11:53And what we know is that when we do come together and pass laws that make it harder for dangerous
12:03people to get their hands on dangerous weapons, we save lives.
12:12Urban gun deaths are down by 20 percent in this country.
12:16From 2022 to 2023, we saw the sharpest decline in gun murders in the history of this country.
12:25In 2024, mass shootings are down over, well, around 30 percent compared to the same time
12:33period in 2023.
12:36We are seeing a precipitous decline in gun violence in this country, whether it be urban
12:42homicides or mass shootings.
12:45And I'm not suggesting that the entire reason for that is the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities
12:50Act, but you better believe that's a big part of the reason.
12:55You better believe that when we pass laws that make it harder for dangerous people to
13:00get their hands on dangerous weapons, that we save lives.
13:11And what matters in this country more than protecting the physical safety of your loved
13:18ones?
13:20What matters more?
13:23Nothing.
13:25Think about it.
13:26You would give anything, anything to protect your son or daughter from physical harm.
13:34You would trade away your career, your savings.
13:38You might even give up your own life.
13:42And we have an easy opportunity.
13:45We had an easy opportunity.
13:46Republicans had an easy opportunity earlier today to just make it a little bit harder
13:52for this small subset of individuals in this country whose brains have collapsed and believe
14:02that the only way to deal with their demons is to turn a gun on others.
14:06We had a chance to make it less likely that that subset of individuals would be able to
14:10kill 58 people like what happened in Las Vegas, and we couldn't even come to that consensus.
14:22We're open for business.
14:24If this wasn't the way today, show us the way.
14:28Tell us how we can answer Republican concerns so that we can get these weapons of war, these
14:36facilitators of mass murder, these bump stocks off the streets.
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