Congressional Black Caucus Calls for Gun Safety Legislation
Floor Speech
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Mrs. McBATH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the honorable Representative Cherfilus-McCormick and the honorable Representative Jackson for hosting this evening's Congressional Black Caucus Special Order hour on gun safety.
This evening we are in this Chamber just merely weeks before we commemorate the massacre of 19 children in their elementary school, and in the last few days even parents have died as human shields in Cleveland, Texas. A woman was murdered, and four others wounded even in my home State of Georgia, and a first grader lost both of his parents and his baby brother in the same shooting in Allen, Texas.
Eight people were murdered as they just simply went about their day.
What is our answer?
Every day we wake up to more dead Americans, we wake up to thoughts and prayers, and we wake up to a refusal to act.
Is this the God-given freedom endowed by our creator--the freedom to go about our day and be gunned down in our malls, in our churches, and in our schools?
Horrifically, first responders are finding little girls without faces in their first grade classrooms.
Children are now orphans, wives are widows, and communities are simply being ripped apart.
Thoughts and prayers, that is not stopping this carnage, this crisis, this ugly, horrific public health crisis. If thoughts and prayers are all that we have to offer survivors like myself and all the survivors that we continue to see day in and day out in this country, I tell you this: Faith without works is dead; our prayers without action are hollow.
God has given us the path to action. He has given us the tools to dam this river of despair that the American people are living in every single day of their lives. It is commonsense solutions that save lives; it is background checks; it is red flag laws; and it is banning assault weapons.
How long are we going to simply stand here and do nothing? How long? How long do we stand in the silence? How long do we listen to the cries of mothers like me that have lost our children and our loved ones to unnecessary gun violence?
This Nation is under siege, and we are simply without the courage to act, the courage to pass laws that the majority of the American people support, they are crying out for, they are begging this body to pass. I and hundreds of thousands of people like me are terrified that this carnage is going to continue.
My son was murdered by a man who never should have had a gun. These children and these families were murdered by those who never should have ever had access to these weapons of war. The life of my son and all those that we have lost were endowed by our Creator. My son's life was stolen from him. These children, these families had a God-given right to live free from this violence, and it was taken from them.
God has called on each and every one of us in this body to act. Only we can stop this. That truth is self-evident.
We can keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them, and we can feel safe in our communities, free from the terror of gun violence, free from the grief and the heartbreak that our families and our communities live with every single day. We should be free to live our lives the way God intended us to live.
Mr. Speaker, I have been a part of this body, a Member of this body for 5 years now, and I have lost count of the times I have come down here and begged my Republican colleagues to act, to put public safety over their love of guns. The sad thing about it is I know deep in my spirit and my soul that this will not be the last time that I have to come down here and beg again.
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