On the recordDecember 18, 2012
We've been to this place before. Before the gut-churning horror and sadness of the killings at the elementary school in Newtown, there was a movie theater in Aurora, a college campus in Virginia, a high school in Columbine. On Friday, I couldn't stop thinking about my own grandson, Josiah, who is 6 and a first-grader at a school in Colorado. How much grief is enough? I think this grief is enough. We need to reinstate the assault weapons ban. We need to ban high- capacity clips. We need more thorough background checks. And we need to offer more mental health services. But a life taken with a handgun is no less of a tragedy. A mother does not suffer less knowing that her child's life was extinguished with a gun that did not have a 30-round clip. Guns kill people. They need to be a lot harder to buy. We need to do a lot more to get them off our streets. This is our time, colleagues. This is our time. We need to pass bold, necessary, overdue gun control legislation. If we do not, this will happen again. ____________________
