Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am going to speak briefly in support of the resolution. Senator Lee, a cosponsor of this resolution, is on the floor, and he will speak after I do. Let me say at the outset that I believe in a strong U.S. global presence. I believe the United States is at its best when it is a global leader. We can and we should be a force for good and for peace in the world. I also believe, quite frankly, that peace comes through strength. I don't apologize for the size of our military budget, nor do I think it would be wise for this Congress to give up this country's massive military edge over every global adversary and friend. Having the world's biggest, baddest military keeps us safe, and, frankly, it keeps a lot of our friends safe as well. My last stipulation before I talk about the resolution would be this: I also believe there are times when we should use that military power. There are times when war or military action is just. If you want to provide safe harbor for terrorists who plan a massive attack against this country, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, then they can expect a visit from the U.S. Army. But increasingly we all have to reconcile with the fact that there are more and more limitations on the effectiveness of U.S. military power. Today, our adversaries and our enemies practice something we call asymmetric warfare, which means they concede our conventional military advantage and use other means and methods to exert power and project strength. China does it through economic aid, Russia does it through bribery and the extension of its natural resources to its neighbors, and ISIL does it through terror and through the perversion of religion. Yet this country and this Congress continue to believe that most conflicts around the globe can be solved with just a little bit more American military hardware. That is what brings us here today to talk about this arms sale to Saudi Arabia, particularly in the context of the ongoing conflict inside Yemen--a civil war inside Yemen in which the United States has become a participant. This is a picture from war-ravaged Yemen--an ongoing humanitarian disaster. We don't have the full extent of the numbers, but there have already been thousands of civilians killed. If we talk to Yemenis, they will tell us that this is perceived inside Yemen as not a Saudi-led bombing campaign, which it is broadly advertised as in the newspapers, but as a U.S. bombing campaign or, at best, a U.S.-Saudi bombing campaign. There is a U.S. imprint on every civilian death inside Yemen which is radicalizing the people of this country against the United States. Why is this? Well, it is because, while the conflict inside Yemen started as a civil war--the Houthis overrunning the government inside Sana'a-- the Saudis and a coalition of other Gulf States have entered the conflict, largely through air operations, to try to push the Houthis back, and they have asked for our assistance, which we have given, and we have given it in substantial means and methods. We provide the bombs, we provide the refueling planes, and we provide the intelligence. There really is no way this bombing campaign could happen without U.S. participation. The United States is at war in Yemen today. The United States is at war in Yemen today, and this Congress has not debated that engagement. This Congress has not debated that war. It is yet another unauthorized U.S. military engagement overseas. But the scope of this disaster for the purposes of U.S. security interests is not just the radicalization of the Yemen people against the United States or the thousands of people who have been killed but also the fact that this war has given ground--an opportunity for Al Qaeda and ISIS to grow--grow by leaps and bounds. Let's be honest. Our first responsibility here is to protect this country from attack, and the most likely arm of Al Qaeda that would have the means or the inclination to attack the United States is the branch that exists inside Yemen. Their recruitment has grown by multiples over the course of this conflict. For a period of time, AQAP was able to use this conflict to grab control of a major port city inside Yemen, which radically changed the ability of AQAP to recruit and to grow their capacity to do harm outside of Yemen, because they had control of resources and taxation inside this city. One would think that if the United States was providing all of these resources to the Saudi-led coalition, that some of them would be used to try to push back on ISIS's growth or AQAP's growth inside Yemen, but the exact opposite has happened. None of the Saudi bombs are dropping on AQAP; they are all dropping on Houthi targets and civilian targets. So we are arming the Saudis to fight an enemy--the Houthis--whom we have not declared war against, and the Saudis are not using those weapons to fight our sworn enemy whom we have declared war against: Al Qaeda. So the civilian casualties mount, ISIS and Al Qaeda grow, yet this is the first time we have had the opportunity to discuss the wisdom of this engagement. We begged the Saudis to change their conduct. We have asked them to target Al Qaeda. To the extent that Al Qaeda is shrinking a bit, it is not because the Saudis have targeted them, it is because other players in the region--the Emirates--have targeted them. We begged the Saudis to stop bombing civilians. Yet in a 72-hour period earlier this summer, the Saudi-led coalition bombed another Doctors Without Borders facility, a school, and the principal's house next door. We give them targets that they should stay away from because they are key parts of routes to bring humanitarian relief in a country that is ravaged by famine, and they still hit those targets even after we told them to stay away. We begged the Saudis to change their behavior inside this war, and they haven't listened. But it is not the only time they haven't listened. The fact is, if you are serious about stopping the flow of extremist recruiting across this globe, then you have to be serious about the very real fact that the Wahhabi-Salafist branch of Islam that is spread around the world by Saudi Arabia and their Wahhabi allies is part of the problem. In 1956, there were 244 madrassas in Pakistan; today there are over 24,000. These schools are multiplying all over the globe. Conservative Salafist imams and mosques are spreading all across the world. Don't get me wrong, these schools and Mosques by and large don't teach violence directly. They aren't the minor leagues for Al Qaeda and ISIS, but they do teach a version of Islam that leads very nicely into an anti-Shia, anti-western militancy. We begged the Saudis to stop setting up these conservative Wahhabi operations in parts of the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Indonesia. Again, they haven't listened. Just take the example of Kosovo. Kosovo 10 years ago would never have been a place that ISIS would have gone to recruit people into the fight inside Syria, but today it is one of the hotbeds of recruitment. It is not a coincidence that during the same period of time the Saudis and Wahhabis spent millions of dollars there, trying to convert Muslims to their brand of religion--a brand of religion that essentially says that everybody who doesn't believe what we believe is an infidel, that the crusades never ended, and that the obligation of a true Muslim is to find a way to fight back against any brand of the religion that doesn't match ours. So for those who are going to vote for this arms sale, who are essentially going to endorse our current state of the relationship with Saudi Arabia and our Gulf State allies, just ask yourselves if we can really defeat terrorism if we remain silent on the primary progenitor of this brand of Islam that feeds into extremism. How can you say you are serious about strangling ISIL when the textbooks that are produced inside Saudi Arabia are the very same textbooks that are handed out to recruit suicide bombers? If we really want to cut off extremism at its source, then we can't keep closing our eyes to the money that flows out of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States into this conservative Salafist missionary movement around the world. This arms sale is relevant to both of these questions--changing the war inside Yemen and sending a message that this export of the building blocks of extremism cannot continue. Why? Because the main part of this arms sale is a replacement of battle-damaged tanks--tanks that were likely in part damaged in the conduct of this war. It represents a piece of a very long ramp-up of arms sales into Saudi Arabia. The numbers are pretty staggering. This administration has sold about six to eight times the number of arms to Saudi Arabia than the last administration did, and the Saudis do listen. They do pay attention to what we say here. They don't like the fact that there are Republicans and Democrats critiquing this relationship. They will not like the fact that there will be votes against this arms sale. So even if it ultimately doesn't become law--which is unlikely, given the fact that even if it passes, the President could veto it--this could impact both of these questions, the conduct of the war in Yemen and the conduct of the export of Wahhabism around the globe. Lastly, let me make the case that rejecting or voting against this arms sale is not going to end or even permanently damage our relationship with Saudi Arabia. We are allies. We will continue to be allies. Our common bond was forged during the Cold War when American and Saudi leaders found common ground in the fight against communism. The Saudis helped ensure that the Russians never got a meaningful foothold in the Middle East. Today, this unofficial detente that exists between Sunni nations and Israel in the region is part of the product of Saudi-led diplomacy. There have been many high-profile examples of deep U.S.-Saudi cooperation in the fight against ISIL and Al Qaeda, notwithstanding these critiques. More generally, our partnership with Saudi Arabia, the most powerful and richest country in the Arab world is an important bridge to the Islamic community--a testament to the fact that we can seek cooperation and engagement with governments in the Middle East and people worldwide, which is a direct rebuttal to this idea the terrorists spread that asserts we are at war with Islam This is not an either-or question, but we are strategic allies, which is different from being a values-based alliance. That means that when our strategic goals occasionally depart from one another, then we shouldn't be obligated to continue our cooperation on that particular front. The Saudis' guiding foreign policy goal is to gain regional supremacy over Iran. We certainly prefer a Middle East with more Saudi friends than Iranian friends; there should be no doubt about that. But our guiding foreign policy goal in that region is not for the Saudis to win the broadening proxy war with Iran; it is to protect our country from attack by terrorist groups that are metastasizing in Syria, Iraq, and now at worrying rates inside Yemen. Today, our participation in the war inside Yemen is making us more vulnerable by attacks from AQAP and ISIS, not less vulnerable. Our bombs, our intelligence, our spotters, and our refueling planes are certainly helping the Saudis project power in the region, but it is fueling an arms race between Shia and Sunni nations that has no logical end other than mutual destruction, increasing chaos, and more ungovernable space for groups that want to attack the United States. Said another way, is this really the right moment for the United States to be sending record numbers of arms into the Middle East? Do we have any evidence from past conflicts in Afghanistan or the Iran and Iraq wars that more U.S. weapons end up in less, rather than more, bloodshed--an abbreviated rather than an elongated war? It is time for the United States to press pause on our arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Let's make sure that the war in Yemen doesn't continue to spiral downward, jeopardizing U.S. national security interests. Let's press the Saudis to get serious about spending more time as firefighters and less time as arsonists, as they say, in the global fight against terrorism. Let's ask ourselves whether we are comfortable with the United States getting slowly, predictably, and all too quietly dragged into yet another war in the Middle East. What will it take for this country to learn its lesson? I thank the Presiding Officer and the body for the time, and I yield back.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Paul and pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, I move to discharge the Foreign Relations Committee from further consideration of S.J. Res. 39, relating to the disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to the Government of Saudi Arabia.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during quorum calls on the motion be equally divided between the proponents and the opponents.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Does section 2004 or any other provision in WRDA 2016 revise the Army Corps' Federal standard for disposal of dredged material from Federal projects?

Mr. MURPHY. I would like to thank Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Boxer for this informative discussion and for their help in clarifying the content and intent of section 2004 and the dredging provisions contained in WRDA 2016.

Mr. MURPHY. That is correct. Sediment from Federal projects and larger private projects are required to undergo toxicity testing, and if they fail, the sediment cannot be disposed of at the Long Island Sound sites. Connecticut requires ``capping'' or placement of clean sediment on top of sediments containing contaminants above certain levels as a best practice. It is not required, but our State does it as an added measure of protection. We understand though that there are some who remain uncomfortable with the open-water disposal of dredged material, even if the material passes toxicity tests. As the Senate affirmed when it adopted the amendment to S. 2848 that Senator Blumenthal and I filed, the best way to resolve these types of disagreements over State water quality standards is collaboratively, with input from all relevant stakeholders. Water quality standards that apply to the disposal of dredged material in Long Island Sound should be worked out by the States bordering the sound, working with appropriate Federal entities. One State should not arbitrarily impose its will on the other. And that is the process I intend to work towards with my colleagues in Connecticut and New York, as we continue to address the issue of dredging in Long Island Sound. If I understand correctly what Senator Inhofe just explained, nothing in S. 2848 gives any State any new rights with which to impose its own water quality standards on any other State. Is that a correct reading of the bill?

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, there is an explanation for why we have worked the shortest number of days in the last 60 years. Everything must be fine. Everybody must be just great. Everybody must be working. Everybody must be able to afford college. The streets have to be safe. That would be a good reason not to work, if everything was just going great for the people of this country. But it is not. In poll after poll, people tell us that they are not happy with the direction of this country. Conversation after conversation we have with our constituents--as I did during our very, very long summer break-- educates us as to the simple reality that people are struggling more today than ever before. People, families, and businesses are hurting out there. There are massive problems in this country, as Senator Tester said, many of which have bipartisan solutions, and still we are not working. If everything were great, if there were no problems to be solved, then maybe that schedule would make sense. But that is not what people think in this country. They know the system is rigged against them. They know their lives can be better, and they are furious, as Senator McCaskill pointed out, when they see that we are not even trying, that we are not even attempting to solve their problems because Republicans would rather be home than be working here in Washington. Ask the family of Stef'an Strawder if everything is OK. Stef'an was one of the best basketball players in the State of Florida. He was a star basketball player on his high school team. His coach said everybody wanted to be like Stef. His 19-year-old sister said no matter where he went, everyone invited him into their home as if he was their own. Everybody loved him. Stef'an was killed this summer, while we were on break, in another mass shooting. This time it was in Florida at a teen party, when a bunch of kids left a teen party and kids from 12 years old to 17 years old were shot. Seventeen kids were shot. Stef'an lost his life. How about the 13 people who were shot in Bridgeport, CT, at the end of August? You haven't even heard about this. Thirteen people were shot at a party. None of them were killed, but 13 people's lives are permanently altered because of that mass shooting. How about what happened this summer in Chicago? Four hundred people were shot in Chicago in the month of August alone. Think about that. That is the worst month of shootings in Chicago's history in the last two decades. People lost their lives. People like Arshell Dennis, who was coming home to surprise his mom on her birthday before he went back to take up his junior year at St. John's University, where he was majoring in journalism. He was shot while he was sitting on his front porch with a friend. He was a member of Upward Bound, a college prep program. He spent the previous summer as an ambassador mentoring other students. He wanted to help kids, he said, because ``a lot of people where I'm from don't make it out.'' There were 4,000 people killed in this country by guns while we were gone for the longest break in recent memory. There were 400 killed in 1 month in Chicago. Here is what makes me so mad. I get it that this year we are not going to pass a bill increasing background checks or stopping terrorists from getting guns. We seem to have hit an end point there, but I listen to my Republican colleagues tell me all the time that the real problem, when it comes to gun violence, is mental health. I don't actually agree that this is the panacea for what ails this country when it comes to gun violence, but if we want to work on mental health, then we can. We have a bipartisan, comprehensive mental health bill that, like the veterans bill that Senator Tester referenced, passed through the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee unanimously. Conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats supported it. It passed the House of Representatives and is sitting pending on the floor of the Senate. What we are told is that we can't do a mental health reform bill not because we don't have consensus but because we don't have time--bull. We have time. We had all of July and all of August. We can stay here through September and October to pass a mental health reform bill that would probably pass unanimously in the Chamber and would bring new mental health resources to millions of people all across the country. I am not going to tell you that I think that is what will solve the epidemic of mass shootings in this country, but it is just one of many pieces of legislation that will make people's lives better, that has broad bipartisan consensus, and that we aren't doing simply because we aren't working. I thank Senator McCaskill for putting the chart out, tweeting it out, and letting the American people know that, for all of the lecturing we got from Republicans when we were in charge about not passing a budget or not moving forward on legislation that they supported, nothing is getting done right now simply because Republicans have made a choice to stop doing their job. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am coming to the floor once again to express my condolences to the families of those who were lost in Dallas--the families of Brent Thompson, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, Lorne Ahrens, and Michael Smith. In Connecticut, we know the ripples of loss that really never end in a community like Dallas and a community like Orlando. There is going to be a long period of healing. Our thoughts and our prayers and any help we can provide from those of us who represent Connecticut and Sandy Hook, specifically, extend to those in Dallas. In the wake of another tragedy, I wanted to come down to the floor for a short period of time--I know my colleagues are waiting to speak-- to talk about some of the very irresponsible rhetoric that gets tossed around when it comes to this debate over the future of gun policy in this country. I want to take 5 or 10 minutes to talk about what is the biggest lie used by the gun lobby in this debate, and it is this: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. This isn't true. It has never been true. It will never be true. It is, quite simply, an invention designed by the gun industry to sell more guns, to convince Americans that laws and rules cannot protect them, and that the only thing that can keep them safe from being shot is to buy expensive weapons and expensive ammunition that pad the profits of the big gun companies. It is time we call this lie what it is. It is a marketing gimmick for gun companies, plain and simple: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. Let me be clear. I don't quarrel with anyone who decides to buy a weapon for self-defense. That is your decision. That is your call. Last week I met in my office with women from Connecticut who came to my office to tell me about their belief that owning a weapon is instrumental to their ability to protect themselves. One woman told me a story of repelling an attacker with a gun that was in her purse, and her sincere belief is she would not be alive today if it weren't for the weapon that was on her person. I support the Second Amendment, and I accept that the Supreme Court has made it clear that this amendment protects the ability of anyone to buy a weapon for self-defense, subject to certain commonsense limitations. But if you are buying a weapon because you think that owning one makes you less likely to be killed by a gun, then you are wrong. If you are standing in the way of policies that crack down on illegal or dangerous weapons on our street because you believe in some kind of gun control Darwinism--a world in which the good guys with guns eventually shoot all the bad guys with guns--then you have it backwards because that is not how it works. You know how I know this? Because study after study tells us that owning a gun makes you more likely to be killed by that gun than to use it to kill someone who threatens you. Studies show that in countries and States with more guns, there are generally not less gun deaths but more gun deaths, like the study in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed a gun in your house doesn't make you less likely to be killed. It isn't even risk neutral. Having a gun in your home actually increases your chance of getting killed by a gun by anywhere from 40 percent to 170 percent. How about the study in the American Journal of Epidemiology that showed that people living in a house with a gun are 90 percent more likely to die from a homicide than a person who lives in a house without a gun. What about the study from the Violence Policy Center that showed that instances of guns being used in self-defense are so rare that on average there are 44 criminal homicides with guns for every time a gun is used for protection in a justifiable homicide. How about one more study. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center study showed that in States and communities with greater gun availability, gun homicide rates were higher, not lower, than in communities and States with lower gun availability. It is your decision whether or not to buy a gun. There are certainly instances where it may make sense, and I don't begrudge the individual who makes that decision, but the data tells us only one story. The actual real, live experience of living in a nation awash in guns shows that contrary to the gun lobby sloganeering, the opposite of their claim is actually true. The more good guys there are who have guns, the more good guys die from guns. We have no clear or more horrifying example of this truth than last weekend in Dallas, TX. Texas is an open carry State, meaning that anyone who can legally buy a semiautomatic weapon can walk around the streets of Dallas or any other community with that weapon attached to them. Reports suggest that there were perhaps 30 people openly carrying AR-15-style weapons at Saturday's protest. Some were also wearing camouflage, bulletproof vests, and gas masks. There were also dozens and dozens of police officers on hand, all of them expertly trained and heavily armed. Between the 30 heavily armed civilians and dozens of police officers, there were more good guys with guns in the vicinity of this one very bad guy with a gun than at nearly any other crime scene in recent memory, and it led to chaos. Here is what Dallas Police Chief Brown said in the wake of the shooting: We're trying as best we can as a law enforcement community to make it work so that citizens can express their Second Amendment rights, but it's increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s slung over their shoulder and they're in a crowd. We don't know who the good guy is versus the bad guy when everyone starts shooting. All of those guns in the hands of good-hearted civilians and trained police officers--and what killed the sniper, Micah Johnson? It wasn't a gun. It was an explosive device attached to the end of a robot on wheels. Eleven brave police officers fired their weapons at Micah Johnson. Dozens of armed civilians theoretically had the opportunity to defend themselves and their fellow protesters, but one deranged man, armed with an antique rifle and 30-round magazines strategically positioned above his targets, was unharmed by all of those good guys with guns, just as Jared Lee Loughner was unharmed by a civilian with a gun in the parking lot of the supermarket where he shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in the head, and just as the armed security guard in Pulse nightclub couldn't do anything about Omar Matteen as he executed 49 young men and women. It is just like what happened to Nancy Lanza, who thought the guns in her home would protect her and her son from harm, only for them to be used by her son to murder her in her sleep and then massacre 20 first graders and 6 of their educators. If you want to buy a gun for self-defense, that is your call, but before making that purchase, understand that the gun lobby is lying to you. If a bad guy has a gun and wants to kill, there is very little that can be done to stop him once the tragedy is in motion. The best policy is to stop madmen and killers from getting these dangerous weapons in the first place. Dallas Police Chief Brown said to us: Do your job. We are doing ours. We're putting our lives on the line. The other aspects of government need to step up and help us. When Connecticut implemented a law requiring a permit to be issued before a gun is issued, gun homicides dropped by 40 percent. In States that require background checks for private handgun sales--listen to this--48 percent fewer law enforcement officers are shot to death by handguns, and in States with universal background checks, women are 46 percent less likely to be shot by their intimate partner than in States without universal checks. This isn't conjecture. Good laws save lives. Concentrate on passing laws that keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of criminals and killers, and you will save lives. Load up your streets, schools, and shopping malls with weapons and just hope that the good guys will eventually outshoot the bad guys, and people will be killed. People across this country have figured it out, and that is why they support expanded background checks by an astounding ratio of 90 percent to 10 percent. There is no public policy in this country that is supported by 90 percent of Americans. They know that smart firearms laws save lives, and so they support universal background checks by a ratio of 9 to 1. It is also why there are fewer and fewer American families buying guns. It makes sense for some people, and I am not denying that. A new CBS News poll shows that gun ownership is at a near 40-year low with only 36 percent of Americans reporting that they own a gun. That is down 17 points from its highest rate in 1994 and down a whopping 10 points from just 4 years ago, but be forewarned, this development will simply propel the gun lobby to be even bolder in spreading its lies about the effects of gun ownership. Just two weekends ago the head of the NRA went on national TV and told Americans that the only way to protect themselves from terrorism is to have a personal defense plan. That means, if you didn't parse his words, to go out and buy a gun from a gun company and help the industry stem this tide of declining gun ownership all in the name of collective self-defense. Well, it is a lie. Good guys with guns generally don't stop bad guys with guns. They didn't in Dallas. Good laws that keep illegal and dangerous weapons off of our streets, that make sure that only law-abiding, peaceful citizens are obtaining weapons--those laws stop bad guys. When you strip away all of the rhetoric driven by the gun industry profit motivations, that is the truth. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am not supportive of the bill we will be voting on shortly relative to the labeling of GMOs, but I do admit the Senator is right in that this was an example of a group of Democrats and Republicans working on a solution that may end up getting the support of a supermajority of this body. That is the difference between what happened on the process of developing a GMO bill and the process of developing our response to the Zika epidemic. Everybody knows what happened here. We had a bipartisan compromise that passed the Senate. It went to a conference committee. Democrats were shut out of the conference committee. I am a member of that conference committee. There was no negotiation between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans on the conference committee threw out the bipartisan compromise that was negotiated here in the Senate in order to address the concerns of very conservative Members of the House Republican caucus, and the bill got loaded up with all of the things that Senator Durbin mentioned. At the top of the list was a ban on funding for Planned Parenthood, which Republicans on the conference committee knew would poison the well. They knew that by putting in a ban on funding for Planned Parenthood, they would make it impossible to pass the Zika supplemental request. We don't need to engage in hyperbole or histrionics. That is what happened. What happened is the Republicans decided to put a bill on the floor of the Senate that couldn't pass, knowing exactly what could pass because weeks earlier we had formed a compromise that was thrown out the window. It is a little unpleasant to be lectured to about why Democrats are unwilling to support the Zika bill that is in front of us because Republicans know exactly why we can't support it. It is because the compromise that we all worked on got thrown out and all sorts of political poison pills got added to it that everyone in the conference knew would mean it wouldn't pass the Senate. Opioid Epidemic Mr. President, I want to talk about another public health crisis that is confronting this country, and that is the overdose crisis that is plaguing every single State that we hail from. Here is the picture of overdoses in my State over the course of the last 4 years. It is a harrowing chart in that, if you go back to 2012, we had just under 400 drug overdose deaths that year. We are on pace in 2016 to more than double that number. Our projected number of overdose deaths is 832. If you look deeper into this chart, it is fentanyl and heroin that are driving these numbers. In fact, our cocaine overdoses have remained relatively stable. It is fentanyl and heroin that are skyrocketing. You can put this chart up for almost every other State in the country and see the same phenomenon. Here it is broken down by town. There is almost no town in Connecticut that hasn't been visited by this epidemic. This small town here is one that you probably know. That is New Haven, CT. On June 23, a few weeks ago, city officials in New Haven declared a public health emergency after 17 individuals overdosed and 3 people died from fentanyl in less than 24 hours. Some of the patients needed as many as five doses of Narcan to revive them. The public health authorities and law enforcement in the city effectively ran out of Narcan overnight because of this batch of straight, pure fentanyl that killed 3 people and sent 17 others to the hospital. That is just one night in one town. Two years ago, the United States Congress authorized $4 billion in emergency funding to combat the Ebola virus--$4 billion for a virus that had less than 10 confirmed cases in the United States. In Connecticut, we are going to have 830 people die from opioid overdose this year. We are a small State. We represent 1 percent of the Nation's population. We are going to have 830 people die from overdoses this year, and this Congress hasn't appropriated one dime of emergency funding. You can't help but think there is a double standard here--that perhaps the reason we are not allocating emergency funding for this epidemic, which is killing dozens of people every week in my State, is because of the nature of the epidemic. It is rooted in addiction, and we still have a stigma about addiction in which we blame the addict. Marvin and Laura Beninson came into my office, and they told me the story of their beautiful, bright young daughter Victoria, who began slurring her words at Easter dinner. Victoria was a wonderful young woman. They knew something was wrong that Easter. When she left the house, they went into her room, and they found needles and little packets of a substance, and they said: Thus began our battle with heroin addiction. This is the father talking now. He said: My daughter has been through detox and six treatment centers. She has stolen and hocked all of my wife's jewelry while we were on vacation, stolen $3,000 to 4,000 from my oldest daughter's bank account while she was in the Army, written thousands of dollars of bad checks from her friend's check book and been arrested for shop lifting. The truth is that addiction is a disease just like cancer and there is no choice once you have it. It certainly was our daughter's choice to take heroin but it wasn't her choice to become addicted. Addiction is a disease, and it can be treated medically, just like every other disease. There may be an element of choice in taking that first dose, but after that there is a medical solution. Yet, for some reason, we allocate $4 billion to combat Ebola and not a dime to combat the epidemic of opioid abuse. The funding that we are asking for--and my colleague Senator Shaheen put a vote before this body to appropriate $600 million in emergency funding--would go to SAMHSA for treatment. It would go to education programs, to prescription drug monitoring programs, and $230 million of it would go to justice assistance grants to make sure we are catching the bad guys who are selling this kind of Fentanyl that is killing people in New Haven. Every day that we wait, this epidemic becomes worse and more people perish. We need to come together and appropriate emergency funding to take on this epidemic. We need to do it soon, but we need to do other things as well. Deeply buried into our Medicaid reimbursement laws is a discriminatory prohibition on Medicaid funding being used for long-term substance abuse and mental health treatment beds. The Presiding Officer and I are trying to repeal this provision as it relates to the treatment of people with mental illness, but it also relates to people who are struggling with substance abuse. Medicaid dollars cannot be used for long-term treatment beds for individuals with substance abuse and mental illness. It is one of the few instances in our reimbursement policy at the Federal level in which we specifically prohibit reimbursement for a treatment that has been prescribed by a medical professional. Again, this seems rooted in this decades-old stigma about people with mental illness and substance abuse--that they should just get over it, they should just cure themselves, and they should make a different choice. So there is not a need for these long-term beds. The second thing we need to do, in addition to appropriating emergency funding to take care of this immediate crisis, is to repeal the prohibition on Medicaid dollars going to long-term treatment beds. Not everybody needs long-term treatment but many do. Many are comorbid with a substance abuse disorder and a mental illness. Yet you get kicked out of many treatment centers within a handful of days. This is a discriminatory provision in our law, and it is leading in parts of this epidemic because once they show up in the emergency room, there is no place to put them. Third, we need to build on what the administration announced recently and pass the TREAT Act. The TREAT Act would allow for more patients to get prescription naloxone--buprenorphine--for treatment of their addiction. It is an effective drug, but as of now doctors can only see a relative handful of patients before they hit a statutory cap. We have examples in Connecticut of individuals traveling on 12 buses for 12 hours to find a prescriber who still had room under the cap in order to prescribe buprenorphine. The lengths you have to go to get medical treatment for addiction are more evidence of this discriminatory treatment and this stigma that remains in the law. There is no cap when it comes to the number of patients a cancer doctor or an orthopedic surgeon can have, but there is a cap on the number of patients addiction doctors can have. We have to pass the TREAT Act as well. These addictions can be treated. I sat down with a group of former heroin users, individuals in recovery, in Bristol, CT, back in March. I spent an entire day in March living the life of the epidemic. I visited emergency rooms, first responders, and people in recovery. Greg told me his story. He injured his back in his line of work as an arborist. He works with trees, and he injured his back. He was prescribed prescription painkillers for his herniated disk. You have heard this story before. He got hooked on the prescription painkillers and continued to see doctors so he could get as many prescriptions as possible--until he ran out. When he couldn't get any more prescription drugs, he turned to heroin and became an addict. He looked and looked and looked for treatment but couldn't find it. Finally, he ran into Courtney Labonte, who runs a Web site called ctsuboxone.com. She found a treatment provider who could get him on medication therapy. Today he is in recovery and doing better. He has made the decision to change his life, and he has the resources to do it. There are millions of people who can tell that story as well, but not enough. Without this funding and the repeal of the discriminatory Medicaid rule and without passage of the TREAT Act, we are denying medical treatment to the thousands of people in my State--including the 800 people who will die this year from overdosing--who are grappling with addiction. I hope that before we break, we will find the courage and common sense to pass these measures and at least get some emergency funding appropriated. I thank the body for its time. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a fellow who has worked on this issue, Dave Keahey, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the calendar year.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. I thank all the staff and, again, all colleagues--40 of them--for joining us on the floor on Wednesday night into the early hours. Let's be clear about what happened. Let's be clear about the fact that this body was going to ignore what happened last weekend in Orlando--the largest mass shooting in the history of this country. We were going to pretend that it didn't happen. If not for the actions of Senator Booker, Senator Blumenthal, 30-some odd others, and me, we would be moving on to business that had nothing to do with keeping this Nation safer. I don't know how these votes are going to turn out tonight. I know people are skeptical, but we are at least going to get to see where people stand on some pretty simple concepts--the concept that if you are suspected of terrorism, you should not be able to walk out of a gun store in this country with a dangerous assault weapon. A new poll today tells us that 87 percent of Americans support that. Guess what. A greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats support that. Do you know why that number is so high? Because this country is under attack. This country is under attack, and the new weapon of choice of terrorists is not a plane or an explosive device, it is an assault weapon. After September 11, we made a decision. We made a decision to stop terrorists from getting onto planes because they were using them to kill Americans. Well, today terrorist recruiters are specifically instructing would-be terrorists to go into gun shops and to gun shows and walk out with assault weapons that, as we saw last weekend, can kill 50 people in an instant. So why wouldn't we apply the same careful protection and make sure people who are suspected of terrorism can't get on a plane and also can't get an assault weapon? Second, why don't we make sure that protection exists whether they are walking into a gun store or a gun show? That same poll that came out today suggested that an even greater percentage of Americans--90 percent--support expanding background checks so that you have to prove that you are not a criminal, that you are not a potential terrorist before you buy a weapon. These two measures are not controversial anywhere else in the American public except for here. And the amendments offered by Senator Grassley and Senator Cornyn aren't even half measures. Senator Grassley's amendment would take people off the background check list, would allow people who were leaving a psychiatric institution to buy a weapon the next day. Senator Cornyn's bill would force the Department of Justice to go to court to stop a suspected terrorist from getting a weapon. They are just shields. They are just shields for Members who don't want to stand up and do the right thing. The reason I came to the floor on Wednesday and didn't leave for 15 hours is that I know at a deep personal level what Orlando is going through. I don't know what the families are going through. That is something which is unique to losing a loved one. But I know what that community is going through. And I believe that for all of the scarring psychological harm that comes from losing a loved one or a neighbor, more harm is piled on when you find out the people you elected to run your country just don't care. It hurts something awful when you lose someone, but it gets worse when your leaders are silent--are totally silent--in the face of your personal horror. Long after all of the moms and dads had left the firehouse in Sandy Hook after learning their boys and girls were lying dead on the floor of that school, there was one father who was left and who wouldn't leave--who couldn't leave. His name was Neil Heslin. He came to this Congress to tell us his story, and as we head into this vote, I will leave you with his words. In speaking about his son Jesse--he was a divorced dad with one son, his best friend. His best friend, his son, was dead. He said: Before he died, Jesse and I used to talk about maybe coming to Washington someday. He wanted to go up to the Washington Monument. When we talked about it last year, Jesse asked if we could come and meet the President . . . because Jesse believed in you. He learned about you in school and he believed in you. I want to believe in you, too. I know you can't give me Jesse back. Believe me, if I thought you could, I'd be asking for that. But I want to believe that you will think about what I told you here today. I want to believe that you will think about it and you'll do something about it, whatever you can do, to make sure no other father has to see what I've seen. My friends, we need to have an answer for Neil and the 80 other fathers every single day who join the ranks of those who know his pain. I urge the adoption of the Murphy and the Feinstein amendments. I yield back. Cloture Motion

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator from Virginia. That is as compelling a case as can be made. Before I yield the floor for a question from Senator Blumenthal, who has been here with me and Senator Booker for every one of the now 12 hours we have been standing here, I want to put that challenge to stop being a bystander to the body in very personal terms. This, for Senator Blumenthal and me, is rooted in our history as well. I was not more than 30 days from my election to the Senate--a celebratory moment in my life--when I was sitting on a train platform, waiting to go to New York City with my then-4-year-old and 1-year-old to see the Christmas lights, when I got the call about the shooting at Sandy Hook, and Senator Blumenthal and I were there hours later. And there are certainly days when I wish I wasn't there and I didn't witness the things I saw and connect with the tragedy that was evidenced that day. But our challenge from those families is to stop being bystanders, and there are similar stories of heroism that maybe I will get the chance to tell later tonight from inside those classrooms, but a letter I keep with me is from a mother whose child survived Sandy Hook. So let me just read an excerpt from it before yielding the floor to Senator Blumenthal, to make this challenge real from a mom who thinks about this every day. She said: In addition to the tragic loss of her playmates, friends and teachers, my first grader suffers from PTSD. She was in the first room by the entrance to the school. Her teacher was able to gather the children into a tiny bathroom inside the classroom. There she stood with 14 of her classmates and her teacher, all of them crying. You see, she heard what was happening on the other side of the wall. She heard everything. She was sure she was going to die that day. She didn't want to die for Christmas. Imagine what that must have been like. She struggles nightly with nightmares, difficulty falling asleep, and being afraid to go anywhere in her own home. At school, she becomes withdrawn--crying daily, covering her ears when it gets too loud, and waiting for this to happen again. She is six, and we are furious. I want to read the rest of this to challenge us to stop being bystanders. [We are] furious that 26 families must suffer with grief so deep and so wide that it is unimaginable. Furious that the innocence and safety of my children's lives has been taken. Furious that someone had access to the type of weapon used in this massacre. Furious that gun makers make ammunition with such high rounds, and our government does nothing to stop them. Furious that the ban on assault weapons was carelessly left to expire. Furious that lawmakers let the gun lobbyists have so much control. Furious that somehow someone's right to own a gun is more important than my child's right to life. Furious that lawmakers are too scared to take a stand. This mother of a child who survived one of those Sandy Hook classrooms finishes by saying: I ask you to think about your choices. Look at the pictures of the 26 innocent lives taken so needlessly and wastefully, using a weapon that never should have been in the hands of civilians. Really think. Changing the laws may inconvenience some gun owners, but it may also save a life--perhaps a life that is dear to me or you. Are you willing to risk it? You have a responsibility and an obligation to act now and to change the laws. I hope and I pray that you do not fail. This was written by the mother of a girl who survived the massacre at Sandy Hook. I yield to my colleague from Connecticut--who has been here with me and Senator Booker since the beginning, 12 hours ago--for a question, without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I yield to the Senator for a question.

Mr. MURPHY. It will shock and surprise you to know, I say to Senator Whitehouse, that it appears to be the latter. We had one of our colleagues come down to the floor and suggest there is a way out of this; that we could come together and work on a compromise. I think all of us--Senator Booker, Senator Blumenthal, and I--were happy to take them up on that effort. I have noted that we have had 6 months since the failure of the last measure to prevent terrorists or suspected terrorists from buying weapons to work on this. No one in the Republican caucus has approached us about trying to find common ground. It wasn't until we took the floor this morning and shut down the process on this appropriations bill that we started to see movement on the Republican side about coming up with an alternative. Now, they did pose an alternative back in December, but it was a miserable alternative that would require law enforcement to go to court in order to stop someone on the list from getting a weapon and capped them at 72 hours to complete that whole process. It was ridiculous and ludicrous. They are probably going to present another alternative. It is important to note that none of that happened until we took the floor, and we have had 6 months since the last vote, and, frankly, 3 days since the shooting in which we could have been trying to work that out.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank Senator Blumenthal for the final question. Let me reiterate my thanks to everyone who has persisted this evening--for all of our colleagues who have come down to the floor to join in this exercise, and, again, to all of the staff and the pages who, indeed, just showed up a week ago for standing with us and for their commitment to public service and to those who sat in the Chair. I have done that for an overnight session or two. I know it is not exactly the way to plan to spend your Wednesday evening. Most importantly, I thank Senator Booker for standing with me quite literally since 11:20 this morning and Senator Blumenthal for being a perpetual friend and partner. I woke up this morning determined to make sure that this wasn't going to be a lost week, and I have been furious since those days following Sandy Hook. I have been so angry that this Congress has mustered absolutely no response to mass shooting after mass shooting in city after city that is plagued by gun violence, such that the children who grow up in the east end of Bridgeport or the north end of Hartford live through stress and trauma that affects their brains in irreparable ways. I am embarrassed that it took me so long to become a convert to this issue. I am embarrassed, frankly, that it took the tragedy in Sandy Hook for me to wake up to the fact that people all around this country, in Newark, in cities in my State, have been living through this horror without attention from this body. There is no silver lining to what happened in Newtown, but inarguably what has happened in the 4 years since has been the focus of attention from all over this country on the inaction of this body and the failure of it to respond, and that is what is so perplexing to me. We have disagreements over what should be done, but what I have not understood is why we don't even attempt to find common ground on this floor--why, week after week, there is not a single vote or debate scheduled on any of the measures that have been proposed to try to stop this carnage. There hasn't been a debate scheduled on the floor of the Senate. There haven't been debates in committees. I am not saying we aren't doing important work, but there are 30,000 people dying every year on the streets of this country. Those whom they leave behind--their moms, their dads, their little sisters and brothers--don't get the total indifference we portray. I know we are not indifferent. I know, in talking to my Republican colleagues, that they feel just as deeply about the loss in Orlando and about the loss in New Haven or Chicago or Newark as we do. I know there is a commonality of emotion here that betrays the story line we portray to the American people. This exercise over the course of the last 14 hours in many ways has been a plea for this body to find a way to come together on answers, because it is devastating. It is devastating to the families who live through this trauma to watch the U.S. Senate do nothing, absolutely nothing, week after week. Think about that. Sandy Hook was 4 years ago, 3\1/2\ years ago, and Congress hasn't passed a single measure that would make the next mass shooting, the next murder of kids in this country, less likely. I don't know what the vote is going to be--if we are successful, as we believe we will be, in getting these votes--but I do know it will be another chance for our colleagues to come together on two measures that we have carefully selected as being the most likely to get bipartisan votes. That is why we chose to demand votes on these two measures--A, because they are significant, they will make a difference, and B, because they are as noncontroversial as you can get. The American people have already made up their minds. They want a background check system that captures potential terrorists. They want to make sure everybody who buys a gun through a commercial sale has to prove they are not a criminal before they buy it. The American people have made up their minds. We chose to ask for the two least controversial provisions possible that still will do a world of good. I am pleased that we are on a path to get those votes. It is a necessary but insufficient response to the carnage that we witness in this country every single day. This is personal to all of us. Senator Kaine said it well earlier tonight--that we have scar tissue, but it is razor-thin scar tissue compared to those today in Orlando who are living through the catastrophe of losing a 21-year-old son in the prime of his life or losing a 24-year-old daughter with all of her potential ahead of her. Our scar tissue is there, but it is tiny. I close by telling a story that I told during my first speech on the floor of the Senate. I introduce you to Dylan Christopher Jack Hockley, who in this picture is age 6. According to just about everybody who knew him, it was impossible not to fall in love with Dylan Hockley if you met him. He loved video games, and he loved jumping on the trampoline and watching movies. He loved munching garlic bread. He had dimples, he had blue eyes, and he had this very mischievous little grin. You can see it here. And he is wearing one of his favorite shirts. His beaming smile would light up almost any room he was in. He loved to cuddle. He loved to play tag every single morning with the neighbors at the bus stop. He liked to watch movies, the color purple, and he loved seeing the Moon. He loved eating his favorite foods, especially chocolate. He was so proud that he was learning how to read, and he would bring a new book home every day. Most importantly, he adored his big brother Jake, who was his best friend and his role model. Dylan's mom Nicole, who has been a champion in the cause of ending gun violence in the country, always thought that Dylan was, in her words, ``a bit special, a bit different.'' She said: He was late to develop speech. He was late to learn to crawl, and there was always a little something about him, but we couldn't put our finger on it. He said he only liked bland foods and he wanted only plain spaghetti. He had a habit of flapping his hands when he got excited. He would put his hands over his ears when he heard sudden or loud noises. He was diagnosed with autism, but, as his father points out, autism is a spectrum with many different facets to it. Dylan loved repetition, and he would watch his favorite movies over and over again--``Up,'' ``Wall-E,'' and ``The Gruffalo.'' He would find a particular portion of that movie that he loved and he watched that portion. He would rewind, he would watch it, he would rewind, and he would watch it. When he watched his favorite parts, his laugh was infectious. Dylan was struggling with autism as a student at Sandy Hook Elementary School, but he was a special boy who was going to turn into a special young man. He idolized his brother Jake, but he idolized someone else as well. He idolized a woman named Anne Marie Murphy. Anne Marie Murphy was his special education teacher and his personal aide. Over the course of the beginning of his first grade year, they formed a bond, a deep bond that is often hard to form for kids with autism like Dylan. Their bond was so tight that he had a picture of her on the refrigerator, along with his class. Every day when he would walk by the refrigerator, he would point to the picture and say ``There's my class! There's Mrs. Murphy!'' It meant something to him to have that relationship, and he loved going to school in large part because he knew he had someone there who loved him back. Senator Booker has talked about the expectations that we should have for each other, that expectation of deep, passionate love for each other. Dylan and Anne Marie Murphy had it. Senator Blumenthal and I got to Sandy Hook Elementary School after most of the families had come to realize that their loved ones weren't coming back, that their little boys and girls were probably lying on the floor of those classrooms. We still saw and heard things that I think we both wish we didn't hear and see. When Nicole Hockley was standing in or outside the firehouse, when she came to the slow, awful, crippling realization that her little boy was not coming back, she had a moment where she thought to herself, maybe Anne Marie will come back and she will tell me what happened to my little boy. Then she had a second thought: that Anne Marie probably wouldn't leave Dylan if he was in danger. When Adam Lanza walked into that classroom and aimed his military- style assault weapon with clips attached to it, holding 30 bullets, Anne Marie Murphy probably had a chance to run or to hide or to panic. Instead, Anne Marie Murphy made the most courageous decision that any of us could imagine. Instead of running, instead of hiding, instead of panicking, Anne Marie Murphy found Dylan Hockley and embraced him. Do you know how we know that? Because when the police entered the classroom, that is how they found Dylan Hockley--dead, wrapped in the embrace of Anne Marie Murphy. It doesn't take courage to stand on the floor of the Senate for 2 hours or 6 hours or 14 hours. It doesn't take courage to stand up to the gun lobby when 90 percent of your constituents want change to happen. It takes courage to look into the eye of a shooter instead of running, wrapping your arms around a 6-year-old boy and accepting death as a trade for just a tiny, little, itty piece of increased peace of mind for a little boy under your charge. So this has been a day of questions. I ask you all this question: If Anne Marie Murphy could do that, then ask yourself what you can do to make sure that Orlando or Sandy Hook never ever happens again. With deep gratitude to all of those who have endured this very late night, I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. That is the state of play, I say to Senator Whitehouse. We had Senator Durbin on the floor earlier today, telling the horrific tales of Chicago, for which the strong background check laws in Illinois make almost no difference on the streets of Chicago because the weak background check laws of Indiana allow for individuals to go there and buy guns online or at gun shows and then ferry them back onto the streets of Chicago. So without that Federal law that creates a uniform standard that you need to go through a background check for whatever commercial means you attempt to buy a gun, then there are criminals every single day who are getting their hands on weapons, separate and aside, as the Senator said, from this question of terrorist access.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator for her passion. It is not a coincidence that sitting in this front row, in this section of the Senate, are three parents of young kids. We are friends, but we are also involved in a common cause, and maybe we bring a little bit more of our gut to this question of what we do to protect children and adults because we think of our own children and we think of how at risk they are. To Senator Gillibrand through the Chair, we have proposed two simple measures to begin with. Let's bring to the floor a background checks bill that expands background checks to gun shows and Internet sales where the majority or the lion's share of sales have migrated to, and let's make sure the terrorists can't buy guns; those that are on the terrorist watch list and no-fly list. Let's start there. If we could get an agreement to bring those two pieces before the Senate in a bipartisan way, then we would gladly pack up our stuff and go home, but we need to have bipartisan consensus on those two votes to move forward and that is our hope and that is the reason we are holding the floor here today. With that, I yield to the Senator from Missouri, a great leader on this issue, for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. It doesn't seem to make much sense. For the question, we can only imagine what that court process looks like. Who knows what rules apply, who knows what the rights to discovery are.

Mr. MURPHY. There is no model for it. We have hamstrung the FBI and the Attorney General by asking them to do more and more with the same amount of resources. To ask them to go through dozens and dozens of court processes--remember, there were 240 people on these lists who tried to get guns last year. So we are talking about a lot of court processes they would have to undertake. It is just totally unrealistic, totally unprecedented. It makes no sense at all. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island. I am glad to be joined by Senator Reed. I yield for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. That is the same response we get. I just reflect on one of my earlier responses to Senator Whitehouse, that I have also heard fear in the wake of Sandy Hook from law enforcement about their ability to combat an individual who has staked out in a school or a workplace who doesn't engage in a suicide mission but then tries to confront and take on police, that you have 30-round magazines, 100-round drums. That is very difficult to match from law enforcement's perspective. I yield for additional questions.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator for a question that is unanswerable. The answer is we cannot. As you know, there is a very real, palpable fear out there today. There is no way to look at what happened in San Bernardino, to look at what happened in Orlando, and not be scared. Yes, it is an attack that is designed to elicit a fear that is disproportional to the actual threat; that is what terrorism is. But people's fear is elevated when they don't see us taking action. Earlier today I think Senator Casey made this point. He said: Can you imagine doing nothing after September 11? Can you imagine if our response after that tragedy was to just do nothing, to just move on to the next piece of legislation as if it didn't occur? That was 3,000 people whose lives were taken. There are 30,000 people a year who are killed by guns. If you add up those who have been killed in mass shootings, the numbers approach that of September 11. So this is a moment in which I think it is impossible for us to go back home and once again say that we haven't done anything. I guess that is the reason we are here. I know it is uncomfortable to stop the CJS process, to force and ask staff to stay beyond regular hours. For many of us--and I think Senator Brown is amongst this group--we just couldn't pretend this was business as usual again. We couldn't go through another one of these shootings--this one the worst in history of this country--and just go back to our regular business. That is why we are here today, to suggest that this time it has to be different. I yield for a question.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator for his question. I really appreciate his outlining at the beginning of his question that not only is the Senator from New Mexico a gun owner but that he is a proud gun owner. He is an active hunter and somebody who cares very deeply about Second Amendment rights. His question is spot-on. Why would you have a system that requires Senator Martin Heinrich to go get a background check when he buys a gun at a gun store but not require an individual to get a background check when they buy a gun at a gun show? The reality is that when this law was passed, the intention was for the background check to cover almost all commercial sales in the country, but it was passed at a time when almost all commercial sales were being done in gun stores. What has happened since that law was passed is that gun sales have migrated--for reasons that you can understand--away from bricks-and-mortar stores and onto Internet sales and to these gun shows. I guess really all we are asking for the text of the law is to basically re-up on the original law's intent. The Manchin-Toomey bill, for instance, still doesn't contemplate the sale of a gun from a father to a son or from a neighbor to a neighbor to be subject to a background check, but if you were advertising your gun on the Internet or if you are going to an organized market and gun sale, then you should go through that background check. I saw you nodding when Senator Bennet mentioned that the average background check takes under 10 minutes. Some people say: Oh, we can't have background checks; it is so onerous. No, everybody who has gone through a background check can tell you that you are by and large in and out of there in a very short amount of time. Frankly, as to the people who aren't in and out of there in a short amount of time, sometimes that is for a reason, and that is important to remember. I yield for additional questions.

Mr. MURPHY. I say to Senator Heinrich, it is hard to understand why we wouldn't do that, especially when, as you noted, people on that list go in and buy a gun and they are almost universally successful in walking away with that weapon. It doesn't happen very often; let's be realistic about what the numbers are. I think I read them earlier and from 2004 to 2014 there were 2,233 instances where suspected terrorists attempted to purchase a gun. And as my colleague mentioned, in 91 percent of those instances they were successful. So we are only talking about 200 or so instances a year. Now, of course, those are the only ones we know about because those are the ones that actually went through a background check. We don't actually know about all those people on the no-fly list who tried to buy a weapon successfully online or at a gun show. We know about these that rated about 200 a year. The reality is that terrorists today who are trying to perpetrate attacks on American citizens have lately not been using a bomb or an explosive device to carry out that attack. They have been using weapons--in the latest attack, an assault weapon. So we should just wake up to the weapon of choice of terrorist attackers and adopt this commonsense measure. I yield for a question.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator. I am so glad to have my neighbor, Senator Whitehouse, joining us on the floor, and I yield to him for a question without losing my right to the floor.