Earl Blumenauer: “my purpose in serving in Congress is to help make our families live in livable communities, places where those families…”

“my purpose in serving in Congress is to help make our families live in livable communities, places where those families can be safe, healthy, and economically secure. An important part of that effort is reducing the toll of death and injury from gun violence. One of my biggest disappointments of a public service career is our inability as a government to take action. Since I have been active in politics we have lost 1 million Americans to gun violence, more than all the Americans killed in every war since the Civil War. Preparing to leave this summer, the House has delayed for 1 year acting on the activities for reducing gun violence that were passed by the Senate. We can in fact take sensible steps, as we have with other public health crises. For instance, we had faced massive carnage on our Nation's highways. Yet, for the last 30 years, as part of a larger strategy, we have cut automobile deaths in half, not by accepting the carnage but by moving forward with a safer automobile product, highway design, and attitudes towards things like drunk driving. The same approach can work with gun violence. The American public wants it and will support it. They want to see steps to make guns safer, to keep guns out of the hands of more people with violent or criminal histories, to close the gun show loophole. One of the most important things we need to do to urge action is to put a face on the 1 million people who have been killed.”