On Senate Floor, Klobuchar Honors Victims and Survivors of Annunciation Catholic Church and School Shooting

WATCH KLOBUCHAR'S FULL REMARKS HERE

WASHINGTON -On the Senate Floor, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith (D-MN) delivered remarks honoring the victims and survivors of the Annunciation Catholic Church and School Shooting.

"Change is possible, but it takes courage, and that courage isn't supposed to come from parents in mourning or from defenseless kids in Mass in the first week of school. Sixth graders should not have to protect first graders," said Klobuchar.

A transcript of Senator Klobuchar's floor speech is below:

Senator Klobuchar: Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague, Senator Smith, because once again, our state is in mourning. After a painful summer where we lost leader Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in a horrific act of violence, we were once again shaken to our core by a deadly mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.

It happened during the first Mass of the year, an exciting time for so many students back to school, meeting their new teacher, seeing new students. Right in the middle of that Mass, two children, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski, were murdered. We mourn for their lost lives, their families, the 21 people injured, including 18 children ages 6 to 15.

I think about the teachers and clergy who never imagined having to instruct children to duck under church pews to save their lives, and all the kids who were forced to grow up way too quickly; they will never forget that morning.

On the day of the shooting, literally within an hour of the shooting, I found out that one of my former employees who worked in this building, whom I am very close to, Kate Nilan, she had three kids in that church [that] morning. She long left Washington, got married, had these three children, two of them twins, and they were all three in that church. Her daughter Cora, who's in middle school, saw two of her best friends get shot, one in the stomach, one in the neck, and she had to run out of that church when they could get to safety, and told one of their dads that his daughter had been shot.

We have since heard about a teacher who got a kid out of a wheelchair, a child with disabilities, put him under the pew, and then shielded him with her own body. We've heard the words of a young, young child who is saved because his friend laid on top of him and got shot in the back.

We heard the stories of the police officers who ran toward and not away from danger and saved lives, and we have heard the stories of the medics and the first responders and the doctors and the nurses in the operating rooms that somehow were able to save all those other lives at two fine hospitals, Hennepin County Medical Center, as well as at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis and I'm sure several others.

You know, it is such a close-knit neighborhood that surrounds this beautiful church. Annunciation is a church on a hill, but it's not a church alone on a hill. It is a church that's attached to a school, and it's a church and a school that are right next to houses, literally a few yards away. And then next to the houses are more houses, and then next to the houses is a shop, and then next to that is a restaurant, and then next to that is another big high school, and then next to that are more houses. So many houses filled with families who, on that day, Wednesday, August 27, had to tell their own kids the horror of what happened in every single one of those houses.

You can't hide from this as much as you want to shield your kids from these kinds of stories, but when they're six-year-olds that are in the mass shooting, that are in the church, who are the neighbors and friends of the kids in the other houses, every parent has to tell their kids about it.

This church, this school, these people of faith, these neighbors, they've all been incredibly strong, and even on this horrific day, I saw hours after the shooting, neighbors sitting out on their lawn chairs with food for each other, neighbors hugging people they knew and hugging perfect strangers whose lives had been just turned upside down.

But most of all, I've been thinking about that little eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel, 10-year-old Harper Moyski, and their families whose lives were taken that day. And I'm going to start by talking a little bit about them.

Fletcher was just starting third grade. He loved his family, his friends. He loved fishing and cooking, and in his dad's words, "any sport that he was allowed to play." His dad also said that Fletcher was on his way to becoming a wonderful young man. In light of his family's tragedy, the family has urged people to wear bright colors to his funeral this Sunday, to honor his memory, and he asks all parents to give their kids an extra hug.

Harper Moyski, the other child we lost, had just begun fifth grade. Her parents described her as a bright, joyful, and deeply loved 10-year-old whose laughter, kindness, and spirit touched everyone who knew her. She was adored by her little sister. Like so many girls her age, she would have sleepovers with her friends. They would stay up late watching movies and doing each other's makeup.

So I met that family just 10 hours after they lost Harper. They joined thousands of people at the Academy of Holy Angels nearby because they didn't want to be alone. They wanted to be with people from their community, whether they knew them or not. They were there to hear from the Archbishop. They were there to hear words of comfort, and I met Harper's little sister sitting quietly on her mom's lap, holding a teddy bear, knowing her life would never be the same.

Harper's family was clear that they want to see us take action, in her parents' words, "change is possible and it is necessary, so that Harper's story does not become yet another in a long line of tragedies."

Change is possible, but it takes courage, and that courage isn't supposed to come from parents in mourning or from defenseless kids in Mass in the first week of school. Sixth graders should not have to protect first graders.

You know, I'll never forget meeting several of the Sandy Hook parents in 2013, and I've shared the story with some of the parents at Annunciation. It was a day that we had the vote on the bipartisan background check bill. I remember Joe Manchin was trying to get that done. It was a strongly bipartisan bill. It was one of my worst days in the Senate because they were in my office, and I had to call Joe to get the latest because he was trying to get the bill done and tell the families that we weren't going to be able to get it passed. So we were just missing a few votes.

And I remember that day because one of the moms in my office described how her son had severe disabilities, and he had a school aide that would be with him all the time, and every day before he went to school, he would point at the picture of the school aid that was on their refrigerator, because he loved her, and he did that that day. So she told me that was the last time she saw her son. He's autistic. Loved that aide, loved his family, and hours later, she sat with other parents in the firehouse in Connecticut, waiting as one by one kids would come in, and their families would cry and grab them and hug them and whisk them away. And pretty soon, the families left in that firehouse knew that they were the ones left. They knew they would never see their babies again. And that mom sat there in that fire house thinking, and the dad and they thought about the fact that that whatever happened to their child, which they now knew he was dead, would happen to the school aide too, and when they found them, she had her arms around him in a closet, they were both shot dead.

And those families asked me that day in my office, "how come we have the courage to come here to advocate for background checks for something that wouldn't have even saved our babies?." Bbecause in this case, as you recall, the guns were in the household that the parents had got, but we advocated for the background checks in closing the loophole, because we believe that it would save lives of other people's babies, and we believed it was the most likely thing that could pass. And we believe that despite some of us wanting an assault weapon ban or other things that this was the smartest thing we could do, and the people in this place didn't have the courage to stand up like we did for other people's kids.

We can never give up, because it is impossible to believe when you look at what happens in other countries that still have legal guns and still allow for hunting. You know that we can be better. You know we can do better. You know that guns should not get into the hands of the people that have been doing these shootings.

In 2018, after another horrific shooting, I worked across the aisle with Senator Hatch of Utah to pass a law which has provided over $400 million to support prevention programs to keep schools safe. We tried our best, but it's clearly not enough.

In 2022, after our nation was rocked by mass shootings in Buffalo and at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, led by Senators Murphy and Cornyn, negotiated with a group of Senators.

It was an important first step in keeping our kids safe, providing more than $2 billion for things like school-based mental health services, violence prevention efforts. It kept hundreds of firearms out of the hands of some people that shouldn't have them, and it also included my legislation to close the boyfriend loophole and keep convicted, convicted domestic abusers from buying a gun.

But it was just a first step, as this tragedy at Annunciation Catholic Church makes clear, there is still so much more that must be done. We cannot rest when gun violence remains the leading cause of death of kids and teenagers. We cannot rest when there have been over 90 school shootings in this country in 2025 alone.

Congress needs to act with the courage and urgency this moment demands and pass common-sense gun violence prevention laws that will save lives.

I come from a state with a time-honored tradition of hunting and fishing, like so many senators in this chamber. When I consider gun violence prevention measures in the past, I would always ask myself, did these reforms in any way hurt my Uncle Dick and his deer stand? My answer was always no.

The shooter in Minneapolis used an AR-15-style weapon to fire nearly 120 of his shots. You don't have to have an assault weapon in a deer stand, but that's what he used that day in that church.

So, that is why a majority of Americans, including many Republicans, support an assault weapons ban. We also need to expand background checks, which over 80% of Americans support, and they're messy; they take too long. I think there's a lot more we could do with the information that we have available to us online right now. Give me a break. We can't figure out that some of these people that have bought these guns, that have been involved in mass shootings shouldn't have these guns. In today's world, with all this stuff online, we're not able to put the resources into figuring that out. How do you tell that to the parents that eight- year- old and 10- year- old? How do you tell it to the parents of the kids that are still in the hospital right now, barely holding on to their lives?

We should close dangerous loopholes to keep guns away from the people who we all know shouldn't have them. We need to ban ghost guns, bump stocks, and high-capacity magazines. It's never one size fits all. Each shooting is a little different, but if we just took these common-sense measures, which wouldn't set us back on hunting or legal gun ownership, we would make a difference.

And we must restore full funding for the ATF, the agency that enforces many of our nation's gun laws and plays a huge role in tracing crime guns. The Administration cut its budget by more than $400 million and rolled back critical gun violence prevention programs across the Justice Department.

So, I'm not saying every one of these things would have prevented what happened in one shooting or the other. But I do know, especially when I look back at Uvalde and the Buffalo shooting, and the dad that was just simply going to get a birthday cake, never came back from the grocery store. I do know that some of these things, on assault weapons or age limits, or doing something when it comes to closing loopholes of who should be able to get these guns, they would have saved a whole bunch of lives if we got that done.

This week, Senator Smith and I, and our entire Minnesota Ddelegation, Democrats and Republicans, put forward a resolution to honor the victims and survivors of the mass shooting. The resolution condemns the violence and commends the bravery and service of law enforcement, first responders, medical caregivers, school and church staff, and community members who acted swiftly to protect and help others.

No one should have to fear this threat of gun violence, and I'm glad we came together across party lines to put that resolution forward, from our most liberal members over in the House to our most conservative, but we have to do more.

In the wake of this senseless tragedy, the Archbishop of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Archbishop Hebda, a shared something that struck with me. He said, "We have to recognize that it's through prayer, but also through the prayer of the feet, through action, that we can indeed make a difference that has to be the source of hope." And he read a letter from Pope Leo, who said, "We must stop the pandemic of arms which infects our world." And the Ppope prayed that we might fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks."

There are things we can do here. There's things that would make a difference, and we all know that it's just going to take the courage of those little sixth graders that laid on top of first graders, or the teacher that took the kid with disabilities out of the wheelchair and laid on top of that. That's real courage. We just have to have a little political courage to get this done.

So let's honor the lives of these precious kids we lost by taking action to stop senseless acts of gun violence, by praying, yes, but also praying for action.

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