Political Quotes

“Next week is the third anniversary of the sad tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School; but it is also time to recall all those other cities in America where tragedies have occurred: Tucson, Colorado Springs, Lafayette, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Dallas, Houston, Roseburg, Isla Vista, the Navy Yard, and closer to my district in Pittsburgh, Franklin Regional High School. What is common among these tragedies is the lives lost. I keep in my office photographs of some of the children whose lives were lost at Sandy Hook--Benjamin Andrew Wheeler, Dylan Hockley, and Daniel Barden-- as well as those of teachers and other people from the school. A day doesn't go by that I greet them in the morning and throughout the day and remember their lives, snuffed out too early. But, sadly, the body count is more than just them when it comes to dealing with what people with severe mental illness and violence do. The body count this year is amazing. There will be 41,000 suicide deaths, 43,000 deaths from drug overdose, perhaps 1,000 to 1,500 homicides, perhaps a couple hundred people who encounter the police and are mentally ill and end up with their death, an unknown number of homeless who die that slow-motion death of homelessness, and those who are mentally ill that die 25 years sooner because of other chronic illness. The body count this year will be greater than the U.S. combat deaths in Korea and Vietnam combined. Will that wake us up to do something in this Chamber?…”