Gun Violence
There are times when I wish I didn’t see the things I saw at the Sandy Hook firehouse on December 14, 2012, as 26 families were told that their loved ones – 20 children and six educators – lay dead on the floor of their first grade classrooms. I walked away from that day pledging that I would do everything in my power to fight the scourge of gun violence, in our schools and in our cities, that has plagued America for far too long. And as the parents of slain sons and daughters in Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport have reminded me, the epidemic of urban gun violence was a largely unnoticed stain on this nation long before the Sandy Hook tragedy.
In the years since the tragedy in Sandy Hook, the gun violence epidemic in America has only worsened as countless communities and families continue to be torn apart by violence. And yet Congress, to my disgust, has failed to act in any meaningful way to address this problem. The solutions are not a secret; we know that simple and broadly supported measures, like universal background checks, cracking down on straw purchasers and illegal weapon sales, and limiting access to high-capacity magazines and military-style assault weapons would save countless lives.
That’s why on June 15, 2016, in the wake of another mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, I went to the Senate floor and conducted one of the longest filibusters in Senate history in order to force the Senate to have a debate on measures to end gun violence. Though the votes that my filibuster eventually forced were not successful, my effort, joined by my friend and partner Senator Richard Blumenthal, were successful in jump-starting a national conversation about gun policy change.
I am going to continue this fight until I have no energy left in my body. I have introduced or cosponsored legislation to close loopholes in our background check system; to make it illegal for those on the FBI terror watch list to buy a gun; to end the ban on gun violence research at the Center for Disease Control; to encourage licensing requirements for handgun purchases; and to help keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. There is no one law or regulation that will prevent every incident of gun violence, but Congress cannot continue to do absolutely nothing in the face of these mounting tragedies.
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