Patrick Leahy: “I will speak more on this subject later this week, but I spent much of last week, both Marcelle and I did, in Vermont.…”

“I will speak more on this subject later this week, but I spent much of last week, both Marcelle and I did, in Vermont. It is a very peaceful State. We walk across the fields at our home, walk down the dirt road where we live, and then go to various places just meeting with people all over the State. A lot of it was in what is called Chittenden County. That is about a quarter of the State's population. That is where I was a prosecutor, State's attorney is what we called it. I made it a point during that time that if we had a violent crime, a gun crime, I would go to the scene, whether it was 3 o'clock in the morning or 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Some of the most violent ones were, of course, at 3 o'clock in the morning. I can still remember every single one of them like it was yesterday, but they were a tiny fraction of what we see every day. I hear people say we should pray for these children. I would say pray that the Congress has the guts to stand up and pass real gun control legislation. In Vermont, we limit the number of rounds you can have in a semiautomatic weapon during deer season. We ought to try to protect children as much as we do deer. Again, fortunately in our State, the number of murders and shootings I went to were nothing like we see today. But I have awakened in the middle of the night remembering the scenes.…”