Political Quotes

“I am sorry to hear the objection. It is obviously not surprising. We have been waiting for a year for this body to act on the issue of gun violence. And though there are a range of measures that may actually be controversial, this is not one of them. This is not one of them. It is really hard to find folks in America who object to the idea that somebody should have to prove that they are not a criminal, that they don't have a history of serious mental illness, before they purchase a firearm. The fact is, the longer we wait, the more people die. There is no piece of legislation that is going to eliminate every single gun death in this country. In my State of Connecticut, when we passed the universal background checks law, we saw an immediate 40-percent reduction in gun homicides. In Missouri, when they repealed their universal background checks law, they saw an immediate 25-percent increase. That is the short-term immediate rate of return--both on the upside and the downside--you get when you take steps to ensure that criminals don't get guns or you take steps to make it easy for criminals to get guns. Senator Blumenthal is on the floor with me as well, and he will make remarks. I have been unable to persuade my colleagues, based on the data, that we should pass background checks--the data being the broad public support for the measure, the data being about the impact on people's lives that this piece of legislation would have.…”