Mr. President, I begin by noting that the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Oregon have a common thread that runs between our two States. That common thread that runs between Connecticut and Oregon is that our two States have been the sites of two very deadly school shootings. At Sandy Hook in Connecticut, it was in mid-December 2012 when a madman armed for a war zone stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School and began a murderous rampage--a rampage that ended with the death of 6 school staff and 20 little boys and girls. Not even 3 years later, a nightmare came to Roseburg, OR. Roseburg is a quiet little town in southern Oregon. It is the town where I spent part of my childhood. It is a town where I went to first grade. It is a town where I learned to swim in the Umpqua River. As I said last October, if this can happen in Roseburg, it can happen anywhere. But happen in Roseburg it did. It was October 1, 2015. It was a beautiful autumn morning in the small town. There on the college campus we heard the sound of gunfire. A disturbed individual charged into a classroom at Umpqua Community College with six guns, and within the space of just a couple of minutes, he took nine lives, including his own. One of the lives he took was a cousin of mine, Rebecka Ann Carnes. Eighteen years old, she had just graduated from South Umpqua High School the previous June. She was an avid hunter. She was a lover of four-wheeling.…
On the recordJune 15, 2016
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