Madeleine Dean: “Every year in this country, 43,000 people, 44,000 people--in one year, as high as 49,000 people-- die of gun violence.…”

“Every year in this country, 43,000 people, 44,000 people--in one year, as high as 49,000 people-- die of gun violence. Every single day, we lose people in this country to gun violence. Mr. Speaker, 54 percent of that horrific number is gun violence suicide. This week the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force held a hearing, and we had six, eight, nine folks testifying before us: folks who had survived mass shootings; folks whose family members lost their lives due to gun violence and suicide; and folks who had accidental shootings take place in their communities that harmed and took the lives of others. When we asked for a committee room in this Capitol in order to host that testimony and to learn something more about it, guess what happened? It was Monday, a fly-in day, when these committee rooms are not busy. There was no room in the House for that committee to be hosted, so we had to go to the Senate. Committee chair after committee chair of the Republican Party, the majority party, denied us access to a committee room to simply hear the testimony of those who know something sad and tragic all too well about gun violence. We had the benefit of the Senate giving us a small committee room where we were stuffed in: advocates, victims, researchers, professors, and others. That should tell you all you need to know, America, about the shame of gun violence in our country and why we are so hampered in dealing with it. Gun violence death is preventable.…”