Ending Gun Violence
Floor Speech
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, it has been 23 years since Columbine. It has been 15 years since Virginia Tech, 10 years since Sandy Hook, 4 years since Parkland. We have offered prayer and thoughts for years with no real action.
It has been 15 days since the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children were massacred. One of the students, a 10-year-old girl, survived because she covered herself in the blood of her dead classmate.
We have trained kids to hide under their tables. We have trained teachers to barricade their doors. We have trained schools to lock down their campuses. Now, are we going to train kids to cover themselves with their friend's blood in order to survive?
When are we going to understand the common denominator here is not just criminals but making it easy for criminals to access deadly weapons?
Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada all dealt with mass shootings, but there was a national outcry, and they put in place restrictions to stop mass carnage from happening again.
We don't have mental health issues more than any other country. What we do have here are politicians who lack the moral courage to stand up to the NRA. We have a society that is not willing to stand up to protect its citizens, especially its most vulnerable, which is our beautiful children. We have to be better than that.
We also must remember, Madam Speaker, it is not just mass shootings. It is white supremacists in Buffalo who massacre elders. It is gangs who carnage our neighborhoods, who allow for a 3-year-old in my district to get mowed down by gunfire.
The problem is guns. The problem is our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We have to have the courage to stand up to them and to stand up for our country. Protecting Individual Freedoms
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, Roe v. Wade is fundamentally about privacy. Fifty, 60, 70 years ago, in order for women to access abortion care, they had to go to back-alley clinics and use wire hangers.
In 1973, it was decided that women have a right to make their own decisions about their bodies. We have to be a country that refuses to go back. We have to be a country that refuses to have women in my generation and the generation before enjoy more freedoms than my daughter's generation and the next.
Republicans will say they are the party of freedom and liberty, but they are the party that doesn't believe in liberty and freedom for women. Democrats are the party that is protecting your freedom and expanding liberty, which is why we introduced and passed the Women's Health Protection Act because codifying Roe v. Wade into law is essentially about protecting the freedoms for individuals to make their own private decisions about their healthcare.
If you stand for freedom, if you stand for liberty, join us and reject an extremist, fascist, misogynistic, backward party that wants to take us back to the stone age where men dictated what women do with their bodies. Help us exist in a country where our values of uplifting and advancing the rights of individuals still stand. Rampant Food Insecurity
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, one in six children in the United States doesn't have enough food to eat. It is unconscionable that we allow 16 percent of our children here in this country to go hungry.
Right now, Mitch McConnell and Republicans are blocking funding to continue the school waivers that allow for children to continue to eat in schools. Our inability to get these waivers and feed millions of children who are food insecure is inexcusable.
Globally, there are 276 million people facing food insecurity around the world, with countries in the Horn of Africa teetering on the edge of famine. We have an opportunity to get people on board and rally around those who are in need and starving.
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