Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it is my honor to represent the State of Illinois and the city of Chicago. I cannot tell you how many times Members of the Senate and the House in the other party have gone to the microphones to condemn the city of Chicago and its crime rate. Let me tell you point-blank, there is too much crime in the city of Chicago, but it is not the only city in America that suffers from that problem. Cities large and small have problems every single day with violent gun crime. My hometown of East St. Louis is a tiny little town of 20,000, 25,000 in comparison to the large metropolis of Chicago. Yet the rate of gun violence there is even higher in East St. Louis than it is in Chicago. We have to do everything we can to deal with it. Let me tell you what ``everything we can'' means. It means we have to look at the flood of guns coming into these cities from out of State, primarily, without background checks, that are getting into the hands of criminals, who are turning around and killing innocent people. To ignore this flood of guns in the United States of America and condemn crime is to basically take a position that you are not going to look at reality. And that is what we are faced with. We have to have a sensible policy when it comes to background checks, universal background checks, to make sure guns are not ending up in the hands of people who will misuse them.…”