Political Quotes

“Mr. President, through the Chair, that is exactly right. Let's make a start. I guess what is so offensive to the people Senator Blumenthal and I represent, especially in Connecticut, is that we have done absolutely nothing; that in the face of mass slaughter after mass slaughter, this body has taken absolutely no action. I know times are tough here. I know we are often at each other's throats. But that in and of itself is unacceptable. Let's find some limited common ground on issues that the broad American electorate support, and let's move forward on it. Maybe we wait to litigate some of the more controversial pieces until later on. As Senator Blumenthal said earlier, this level of death would be absolutely unacceptable if it came by way of disease or if it came by way of infection. No one would contemplate standing pat and doing nothing if a mosquito-borne illness were killing 80 people a day in this country or wiped out 50 in one evening. No one would accept Congress doing nothing and just moving on to the next piece of legislation after the next wave of people dies. That is just not something people would accept. But for some reason in this country, we have come to accept that gun violence is inevitable and that there is nothing we can do or should do about it. I am going to make this argument with greater specificity later this afternoon, but it is important for us to look at the data on gun deaths in America versus gun deaths in every other industrialized nation.…”