It honors a Chicago teenager who died in a drive by shooting in 2013. And Durbin says there are hundreds of gun deaths in the US every day - some are suicides but many are homicides.
"The United States is unique in the world, unique in terms of the number of people who are killed with guns each and every day in this great nation. This should be a source of national embarrassment and national resolve."
As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he says there should be a system of universal background checks to prevent people with mental illness and those with felony criminal records from being able to own guns.
Durbin says some progress on this is possible in Congress, it won't be as much as he wants, but "any measure of progress is long overdue."