I come to the floor today to take a moment
and remember the tragedy that occurred four years ago at the Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
On that day, we lost seventeen innocent
souls from this Earth at the hands of a troubled, and evil young man who
entered the school and opened fire.
This tragedy can’t be forgotten. Not by
the survivors of this attack, not by the families who lost loved ones and not
by us in Congress.
We must continue finding solutions to
prevent these attacks.
In this spirit, today, I am pushing for
the passage of my bipartisan and bicameral EAGLES Act.
My bill is supported by over 40 state attorneys
general, along with several groups, including Stand with Parkland, the
Fraternal Order of Police, the National Association of Secondary School
Principals and Major County Sheriffs of America.
Passing the EAGLES Act is vital in our fight to protect our schools and to
promote safe and healthy learning environments for our children.
Just this month, the National
Institute of Justice published an article discussing
common traits of persons who engaged in mass shootings between 1966 and 2019.
Their analysis showed that the people who
commit these acts were commonly troubled by personal trauma before the
shooting, nearly always in a state of crisis at the time and, in most cases,
engaged in leaking their plans before opening fire.
Every single one of those findings applies
to the shooter in Parkland.
It’s clear we need to ramp up prevention
efforts.
The EAGLES
Act would achieve these aims by reauthorizing and expanding the U.S. Secret
Service’s National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) to proactively identify and
manage threats before they result in more tragedies.
NTAC studies targeted violence and
proactively identifies how to manage threats before they result in more
tragedies.
The EAGLES
Act also establishes a Safe School Initiative to look at school violence
prevention and expands research on school violence.
My bill also provides funding to hire
social scientists with expertise in child psychological development to support
NTAC’s work. This is important to make sure that proven and evidence-based
policies will continue to support everyone in the school environment
positively.
Students need more support from Congress
for a safe, positive and inclusive learning environment. The EAGLES Act delivers just that by
providing resources and training to school personnel, which will enable them to
identify troubled youth and give them the intervention and treatment they need,
hopefully long before an intervention is needed by law enforcement.
While we cannot undo the tragedies of the
past, we must continue working on ways to prevent future tragedies.
I’d like to encourage all of my Senate
colleagues to support this bill.