Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we don't have to fight over everything here. It is OK if, occasionally, we find consensus around commonsense things that we could do together to keep our country safe. I kind of thought we had consensus on at least the idea that civilians shouldn't be able to get their hands on machineguns. I understand there are differences between Republicans and Democrats on AR-15s, that maybe not all of my Republican colleagues think that everybody should go through a background check before they buy a gun. But I thought--I thought--we were all in agreement that fully automatic weapons were too dangerous to be in the hands of civilians; that these are unquestionably weapons of war. They are designed--designed--for mass slaughter, and you just do not need a weapon that allows you to fire hundreds of rounds per minute in order to hunt, in order to protect your home, in order to shoot for sport. But, apparently, we do not have consensus on the question of whether Americans should have access to machinegun technology because, earlier today, Senator Heinrich--a gun owner, somebody who knows a lot about weapons--came to the floor to ask for consent that we make sure that civilians can't get their hands on a device called a bump stock that allows you to convert a semiautomatic weapon into a machinegun. That is, effectively, what a bump stock does.…”