John Yarmuth: “I thank the gentleman from Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, this is a very, very meaningful day. Like so many other things in our…”

“I thank the gentleman from Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, this is a very, very meaningful day. Like so many other things in our lives, there are certain times, certain events that you always recall where you were when they occurred. And I remember very well that Saturday when I was at lunch with a group of friends and received word that Gabby had been shot. I remember later in the day not too long after that when the reports were actually that she had passed away. I remember the feelings I had then. Fortunately, she did survive, but the emotions of that day live with me, and, unfortunately, they are reinforced too many times. They have been reinforced at Newtown and in Aurora. And even before the Gabby Giffords shooting in Tucson, they were reinforced in my community of Louisville, Kentucky, where a disgruntled employee shot, with an assault weapon, a number of coworkers in the Standard Gravure printing plant that prints the Courier-Journal. I remember also a mass shooting at Heath High School in Paducah, Kentucky, one of the first school shootings. Unfortunately, the list continues to grow. Many of these inexplicable shootings are committed with weapons that are designed only to inflict massive casualties.…”