Earl Blumenauer: “I think there is a revolution today in this country of thinking about how we deal with gun violence, and the lack of…”

“I think there is a revolution today in this country of thinking about how we deal with gun violence, and the lack of accountability today is on the floor of this Chamber where the American public overwhelmingly supports simple, common sense approaches to reduced gun violence but this Chamber is still in the thralls of apologists for gun violence and refuses to do what the American public would support. It is clear, I hope, from my discussion last week, that it is wrong for this Congress to make it hard for a 2-year-old to open a bottle of aspirin but not make it hard for that 2-year-old to shoot his baby sister. My point...was instead that this Congress has made it clear that there are certain core product safety standards which we are afraid to extend to real guns because of the threat of the NRA. This legislation before us today has two nonsensical approaches. One, it undercuts our efforts to have a cooperative effort with the private sector in solving problems of gun violence...”