WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, following a spate of horrific mass shootings in recent days, most recently in Boulder, Colorado, and Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) joined Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and other Democratic colleagues on the Senate floor to honor the memory of those who have been killed by gun violence in the past month and urge his colleagues to take action to pass common sense gun safety measures.
Key Excerpts
“I believe that if America has not broken your heart, then you don't love her enough. Name after name tonight has been spoken by colleague after colleague and dear god, every single name is a son or daughter. It is a brother or sister. It is a family member. It is -- they are a person part of a community and they are dead but this is not just any limited list-It seems to grow like a cancer on the soul of our country.”
“The death in our country has been something like that has never been seen before and even a country at war because the people that have died, the human beings that have lost the family members that have been slain their total number in just my lifetime add up to more than all of the Americans that have died in every single war from the revolution to our current wars in the Middle East. And so my friends and my colleagues have read name after name after name, but the painful heartbreaking reality is we could have taken hour after hour over days after days to name the total that have died in my lifetime.”
“This is a moment in American history that could be the inflection point. If we act now, we can end some of this nightmare. If we fail to do anything, we'll be back here again, the list of the dead will be longer, the heartache and the pain and the wounds and the grief and the sorrow and the shame will be deeper in America, the world's greatest country. We must demand of each other a greater love. We must end the poverty of empathy. We must free ourselves from this prison-from this dungeon. We must release ourselves from these chains. We must demand that this nation be the nation we want it to be, be the nation we hope we should be, be the nation that those in military uniforms die for…”
“The greatest calling of every faith that there is not words, but real true manifestation of the principle and the call, will we be silent? Will we be ignorant? Will we avoid? Will we do nothing? Will we be passive or will we truly be a nation that loves one another?”
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