Recognizing Gun Violence Awareness Month

Floor Speech

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Ms. GARCIA of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the destruction gun violence has had on our country and our sense of normalcy.

I grew up in a tight-knit farming town in South Texas. My daddy taught me to shoot when I was a little girl. We were poor, so we hunted to feed our communities and make a living.

Today, guns have taken a different meaning for far too many.

Today, Texas has more gun owners than any other state in the country. And that likely makes us one of the least safe states.

Gun violence is an epidemic in this country.

Our children constantly live in fear. They are now more likely to die from guns than anything else.

We have seen too many schools shot up, and still nothing has been done.

Despite what Republicans want you to believe, guns are not the solution. Arming teachers is not the solution.

Sevety-seven percent of my constituents support an assault weapons ban, 92 percent support red-flag laws, 94 percent believe domestic abusers should be disarmed, and 95 percent support universal background checks.

We must put people over politics and work together to protect our citizens, but this can't happen with Republicans' unwillingness to take more far-reaching action.

We need them to work with us to expand on the bipartisan work of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans continue to block common sense solutions.

They refuse to work with us to pass universal background checks.

They refuse to ban bump stocks.

They refuse to finally ban assault weapons or protect against dangerous ghost guns that only make our communities less safe.

And it's not just Republicans in the House.

The extreme MAGA Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Trump-era ban of bump stocks, reopening the door for deadlier and deadlier mass shootings.

We are swimming in guns.

It's only a matter of time.

That is why I am doing my part in Congress.

I have cosponsored legislation on universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.

I am also the proud cosponsor of the Closing the Bump Stock Loophole Act, which would put a law on the books to treat bump stocks as machine guns following the Supreme Court's disastrous ruling.

We need to keep our residents safe, and we must act now. We will continue to fight for safety until we get it done.

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