Political Quotes

“I rise today to talk about the tragedy in Parkland and the responsibilities of the Senate to try to make our communities safer. I am going to talk very personally about my own experience in confronting gun violence as a mayor of an urban area, Richmond, VA, and as the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. I will start by saying, I am a gun owner. I am a Second Amendment supporter. When I was an attorney in private practice, I was the lawyer who worked with an effort to amend the Virginia constitution to guarantee Virginians the right to hunt and fish. The Second Amendment and private gun ownership is an important part of our framework. I support it, but I obviously believe that we can do things consistent with the Constitution that will make our Nation safer, and I ask my colleagues to join in that effort. When I was elected to the Richmond City Council in 1994, Richmond, at that time, was only on one top 10 list that I am aware of. It is not the one you want to be on. We had the second highest homicide rate in the United States. We were not a high-crime area generally, if you looked at all crime, but in homicides and aggravated assaults--assaults committed with weapons--we were unusually high. The weapons of choice in these homicides and aggravated assaults were guns. I remember very early in my time at the city council getting called to a neighborhood, Gilpin Court, which is a public housing community in my city council district.…”