Ilhan Omar: “It has been 23 years since Columbine. It has been 15 years since Virginia Tech, 10 years since Sandy Hook, 4 years since…”

“It has been 23 years since Columbine. It has been 15 years since Virginia Tech, 10 years since Sandy Hook, 4 years since Parkland. We have offered prayer and thoughts for years with no real action. It has been 15 days since the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children were massacred. One of the students, a 10-year-old girl, survived because she covered herself in the blood of her dead classmate. We have trained kids to hide under their tables. We have trained teachers to barricade their doors. We have trained schools to lock down their campuses. Now, are we going to train kids to cover themselves with their friend's blood in order to survive? When are we going to understand the common denominator here is not just criminals but making it easy for criminals to access deadly weapons? Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada all dealt with mass shootings, but there was a national outcry, and they put in place restrictions to stop mass carnage from happening again. We don't have mental health issues more than any other country. What we do have here are politicians who lack the moral courage to stand up to the NRA. We have a society that is not willing to stand up to protect its citizens, especially its most vulnerable, which is our beautiful children. We have to be better than that. We also must remember, Madam Speaker, it is not just mass shootings. It is white supremacists in Buffalo who massacre elders.…”