Political Quotes

“I rise to speak about the same issue my colleague from New York just spoke to, and I know others have preceded her on the floor. I am grateful to be a part of this discussion today. What I could do--but I know I don't have to because it is so well known now--is go through the three or four most recent mass shootings which are the ones that get most attention, but I don't have to do that because we know so well now what happened just in the last number of weeks. One way to remember them, of course, is by the names of the communities: El Paso, Dayton, Midland, Odessa--names like that where everyone in the country knows exactly what we are talking about because of what happened there. What we don't talk about enough, of course, are the places where there is daily gun violence and horror and tragedy and death and grievous injury because it doesn't get the same attention. Tragically, another way to go through a list of tragedies that are connected to this awful epidemic of gun violence--this uniquely American problem of gun violence--is to use numbers. These numbers are now emblazoned on the communities that were so tragically destroyed, in large measure, by these events. In El Paso it was 22, in Dayton it was 9, and in Midland and Odessa it was 7. So doing the math, that is 38. That is the number of people killed in just three places. Of course, there are a lot of other deaths between those tragic events which aren't getting the same attention.…”