On the recordSeptember 9, 2019
Last week, students across my district, PA- 5, and across the country celebrated the start of the 2019-2020 school year. Students returned mostly eager to learn and teachers ready to teach; but in my district and others, too many desks had empty chairs. As we were high-fiving students at a Chester elementary school, a school administrator turned to me and mentioned that one of the second graders wasn't there. She was lying in a bed at Philadelphia's Children's Hospital recovering from a gunshot wound that she suffered while sitting in her grandfather's car outside a grocery store the week before. ``I don't know how much more of this I can take,'' he said to me. Like many of us, this dedicated educator was visibly worn down by the daily scourge of gun violence, the funerals he has attended for children, for children whose lives have been cut short before they could even begin or who have been forever scarred and limited by the trauma they have experienced or witnessed. We do not have time for excuses. We need our colleagues in the Senate to act. There is no one solution to ending gun violence in our country. We need to implement an array of commonsense, research-based solutions, but the first step must be a will to act. ____________________
