Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, at this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Clarke).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. At this point, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. At this point, I would yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentlelady for those words. I am so pleased to have joining us on the floor the Democratic leader. I yield the customary 1 minute to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the Leader very much. I thank very much my delegation. And I thank all who have come down this evening to publicly express their support for the families of Newtown to help paint us a path forward; and thank you very much, everyone, for your private words as well. I'll leave everyone with just two final thoughts. First, a thought about Newtown itself. Newtown is a small town. It's a small town that is very close-knit. As I've said a number of times over the past few days, the pride of Newtown is the Labor Day parade. It's the biggest Labor Day parade in the State, and people from all over the State come to Newtown on Labor Day. Everybody in town spends half the year getting their float or their marching contingent ready--the school groups, the churches, the community and civic groups. It's a slice of Americana out of a Norman Rockwell painting. And that's Newtown. That's particularly Sandy Hook. And the closeness of this community, it makes the grief even deeper because everybody knows everybody. When a school, a community school has this many lost lives, it touches a little bit deeper. But I think it also paints the path forward to recovery because people are so close, because you don't have to go too far to have somebody be able to reach out and grab your shoulder in order to give you a little bit of a boost, a pathway back. The closeness of Newtown makes it hurt more, but the closeness of Newtown will also make us heal as well. We've got great leaders as well. Governor Malloy was on the ground within hours, and he basically has not left and has not slept. Pat Llodra, the first selectwoman, has been just an inspiration. The superintendent of schools, the police chief, and the all-volunteer fire department, these men and women in the fire department, none of them are getting paid, and they've been down at the firehouse, out at the site, in the community almost without end since this incident. And this final thought. On Sunday morning, Senator Blumenthal and I went to the church service at the local Congregational Church, and a guy grabbed us as we were walking out, gripped our arms tight and said, ``Make sure this never, ever happens again.'' You know, the honest truth is we can't make sure it never happens again, but we certainly can make it much less likely; and we can certainly find ways to make sure that if someone does slip through the cracks and they set themselves on a path of destruction, the path of destruction is nowhere near the scale we saw in Newtown. We're grieving right now, and we're going to join this process of figuring out where we go from here very soon, but it helps to know that we have the support and the love and the sympathy and the thoughts of the United States House of Representatives. It will help me to be able to bring back this resolution to the people of Newtown and the people of Connecticut. And we know that very shortly we will join you, we will join the President in figuring out a way to make sure that, within our power, this doesn't happen again. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. At this time I would yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. At this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, at this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We've got a number of speakers, so we'll try to give 1\1/2\ minutes to as many as we can. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Colorado (Ms. DeGette).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the chairman very much for his kind words and for his generosity in allowing us to have this time on the floor this evening to both remember the 26 individuals who were brutally murdered on Friday morning in the village of Sandy Hook in the town of Newtown, Connecticut, but also to start to paint a pathway forward. Right now, Newtown, Connecticut, is grieving deeply. It's going to be grieving for a long time because, frankly, we are just in the process of figuring out what to think about this, never mind understanding how to recover. This morning, at the first of what will be far too many funerals, you could start to see through the darkness a glimmer of how we figure a way out of this. Little Noah Pozner was buried this morning by his parents and by his family. Noah was an amazing little 6-year-old. Not unlike most other precocious 6-year-olds, he loved role-playing; he was mischievous; he was as smart as a whip. He always talked about what he wanted to do in life, what he wanted to be. One day, he'd say he wanted to be a doctor. On another day, he'd say he wanted to be a police officer. On most days, his mom said he wanted to be a taco store owner. He loved tacos. That was his dream in life. What we've seen on TV and in newspapers are these faces, the beautiful, gleaming, pure faces of these 20 first graders who perished; and while all of our hearts are just sick with grief, we know that their purity and their love is going to be the inspiration for the little community of Newtown and, frankly, for this whole country and this whole world to figure out how to recover. I've been there on the ground since Friday afternoon almost nonstop, and Newtown is asking itself lots of questions about why it happened to us. What could we have done? Why did this guy do it? As I just said on the House floor, those questions are going to stick around for a while; but what you see in Newtown today is just this over-abundant love. I mean, within hours, the fire station was filled with counselors, filled with public safety personnel, filled with food, filled with everything that could possibly support these families. Those offers of help and those offers of support have just kept on coming and kept on coming. What has also emerged are the stories of what happened that day. Certainly, the tragedy and the horror is first and foremost; but underneath that is heroism, only the beginnings of which we know right now. This is a great school, first of all. This was the best school in Newtown, one of the best in the entire State, and it's because of a principal named Dawn Hochsprung. Dawn was a great principal right to the end. She was in a meeting when it happened. She told the people in the meeting to run the other way so that she could run directly to the shooter to try to disarm him. A young teacher, Victoria Soto, had the soundness of mind to tell her kids to hide in the closet. She told the shooter that the students were in the gymnasium, somewhere else in the building. She didn't survive, but many of her students did because of what she did. When you start to hear more snippets of teachers who got their colleagues out the window, of kindergarten teachers who huddled their kids, kept them quiet, hummed to them, read them quiet stories so they wouldn't be overheard, you start to know what kind of community Newtown is, and you start to understand how Newtown survives. I feel like I've done a lot of talking the last 4 days, both publicly and to families and to community members, and so I want to make sure that this is an hour where those who have been grieving all across the country can come and share their thoughts as well. We've offered a resolution tonight which expresses both our outrage at what happened that day, but also our great sympathy. It does help to know that people from all around the country, from every congressional district and from every country around the world are grieving with us. Only bits and pieces of that seeps through that wall of misery that surrounds Newtown now; but when it does pierce that veil, it helps. We're going to have a lot of time over the next few days and weeks to talk about what we do next, and I'm sure we'll have some of that discussion tonight. I'll join that conversation when it's right, and I don't begrudge anybody that has it today. It's important to talk about how we move forward and how we make sure this never ever happens again. For those of us in Newtown, we remember those 20 kids and those six adults--Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Rachel D'Avino, Olivia Rose Engel, Josephine Gay, Dawn Hochsprung, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine Hsu, Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, Ana Grace Marquez- Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Anne Marie Murphy, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Lauren Rousseau, Mary Sherlach, Victoria Soto, Benjamin Wheeler, and Allison Wyatt. I'm going to remember those people for a long time in Newtown. I'm going to grieve with them and their families. We're also going to take their memories, the beauty of those kids, the heroism of those adults, and let it point us, let it point the strong, close-knit community of Newtown, Connecticut, let it point us to a way we can survive. With that, I'd like to yield 5 minutes to my friend from the Third Congressional District of Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentlewoman. At this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, at this point I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. McCarthy).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. At this time I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman. At this point, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I yield the gentlelady 30 additional seconds.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentlewoman. At this time, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Chu).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Curson).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. May I inquire as to the time remaining?

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentlelady. At this point I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 833.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentlewoman. At this time, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, on Friday morning, I brought my 4-year-old to school. I dropped him off at 8:45, just like millions of other parents did all across this country, and a few hours later I saw him again. He had a big smile on his face. In Newtown, Connecticut, on Friday, 20 parents dropped their first graders off at Sandy Hook Elementary or kissed them good-bye as they got on the school bus, and that was the last time they saw their kids. Something horrible, something unexplainable happened at Sandy Hook Elementary last week. When people ask me how are folks doing, I tell them right now there's a lot of blank looks, these people are just trying to process what happened. Twenty gleaming, beautiful children were gunned down, along with six adults who loved them dearly, by a young man with a sickness that masqueraded as evil that day. So we are left asking all these questions: Why? Why us? Why these little kids? Why did he do it? Why weren't we able to prevent this from happening? The whys are almost infinite. In the coming days and weeks, I guess we'll get some answers to these questions, but most of them won't have answers. But when you peek through this vast crippling darkness of the last 4 days, there's one answer that we know for certain. If we ever wondered what kind of community Newtown was, if we ever doubted the deepness of our love for one another, those questions have been answered, and they've been answered definitively. They were answered by Principal Dawn Hochsprung, who told her colleagues to run one way so that she could run the other way, directly toward the gunman. They were answered by Victoria Soto, who hid her kids in a closet and died shielding her students from the assassin's bullets. And they've been answered by the thousands of individual acts of humanity that have overflowed from the people of Newtown in the days since the shooting, a community just pouring out love trying to help console this incalculable grief. I went to the first of too many funerals this morning, and the last thing we know is this: All those wonderful little faces that you see on TV and in the newspaper, like Noah Pozner, who was laid to rest this morning, they're a reminder that despite the terrible and awful things that happened, that inside the hearts of all of this is this unbelievable goodness. That's all Noah Pozner had was goodness, was just this purity of spirit. Newtown is going to survive this because it's a close town. They hurt more because they're close, but they also can survive because they're close. And they can also survive because they will get this inspiration from these 20 little kids who are asking this town to remember how good they were and try to equal that. As Newtown wrestles with this grief and recovery, the thoughts and the prayers from others matter. I want to thank everyone here for all of the individual love that you've showered down upon our little town. I want to thank the Connecticut delegation here with me today for all of their support. It helps in some small way to know that the world is grieving with us. So, Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the House now rise and observe a moment of silence for the 20 beautiful children and six courageous adults who perished on a crisp, cold Friday morning in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.