Ed Markey: “I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his leadership on this issue. It is the issue we should be debating this week…”

“I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his leadership on this issue. It is the issue we should be debating this week and next week in the Senate. I thank him and Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut, Senator Durbin, Senator Booker, Senator Cardin--everyone whose voices down here are saying the same thing. We have learned a lot about this problem, but we still don't know all of the answers. The answers we do know we should be voting on this week. We should be putting those protections on the books. There is some commonsense knowledge we each have--that the FBI should have the authority to block gun sales to potential terrorists. How hard is that? No gun sales to potential terrorists in the United States. The NRA says no. The NRA said no last year. The NRA said no the year before. The NRA controls the agenda of the Senate. They control this body. They are the ones who decide whether guns can be sold to terrorists in the United States of America--the NRA. The American people say that NRA should stand for ``not relevant anymore'' in American politics, but it is not so. The NRA controls whether we are going to be able to vote on banning terrorists from being able to purchase guns. So a terrorist can be on a no-fly list and can't get on a plane. We don't want a terrorist in the passenger cabin of a plane in the United States, so they are banned from getting on that plane.…”