HARTFORD, Connecticut (AP) – A U.S. senator who came to Congress to represent the Connecticut community, where 26 elementary school students and teachers were killed nearly a decade ago, asked colleagues on Tuesday when the last school shooting took place to accept legislation targeting the nation’s problem with gun violence.
The mass shooting at Rob Elementary School in Uwalde, Texas, nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from Newtown, Connecticut, felt familiar to residents and staff, who saw many similarities to the 2012 lone gunman attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School. .
Senior Senator Chris Murphy appeared in the Senate on Tuesday and called on lawmakers to do what they failed to do after 20 children, mostly 6 or 7 years old, and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, died on December 14, 2012. failed to pass substantial legislation against gun violence following the collapse of the bipartisan Senate efforts following that massacre.
“What are we doing?” Murphy asked. The Democrat, who represented Newtown when he was a US congressman, called on his colleagues to find a compromise.
“I am here, on this floor, to pray – literally to fall on my hands and knees – to ask my colleagues. Find your way forward here. “Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely,” he said.
“I just don’t understand why people here think we’re powerless,” Murphy told reporters later. “We are not.”
He said he was working with colleagues – and in particular Republican Sen. John Cornin of Texas – to see if they could garner any bipartisan support for gun violence legislation.
Although Democratic President Joe Biden’s party has little control over Congress, bills on gun violence have been blocked in the face of Republican opposition in the Senate.
Last year, the House of Representatives passed two bills to expand inspections for the purchase of firearms. One would close the door on private and online sales; the other would extend the review review period. Both have faded in the 50-50 Senate, where Democrats need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster’s objections.
Tuesday’s tragedy in Texas looked like the Sandy Hook shooting when a 20-year-old man made his way to a locked school on December 14, 2012, killing 20 first-graders and six adults with an AR-15 legally purchased rifle from his mother. . He committed suicide when police arrived. Before going to school, he fatally shot his mother at their home in Newtown.
“My son never came home from Sandy Hook. “My heart bleeds for Texas as I relive Dylan’s murder,” Nicole Hockley, Sandy Hook’s parent, told USA Today.
In February, the families of nine Sandy Hook victims reached an agreement for $ 73 million in a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the rifle used in the shooting. The case against Remington, filed in 2015, has been closely monitored by gun control advocates, gun rights advocates and manufacturers because of its potential to provide a roadmap for victims of other shootings to sue firearm manufacturers.
The families and one survivor say the company has never had to sell such a dangerous weapon to the public. They said their focus is on preventing future mass shootings by forcing arms companies to be more responsible with their products and the way they market them.
“I hope more people stand up and demand action and push for change and stop just accepting tweets of thoughts and prayers. This will not save lives. That won’t bring people back, “said Erica Lafferty, daughter of Dawn Lafferty Hawksprung, the murdered director of Sandy Hook.
“It’s really just a gun lobby conversation and something people think they should say instead of action,” she told the Associated Press.
Lafferty, a program manager at Everytown on gun safety and a proponent of universal checks in the past, said she decided to retire from media talks a few years ago after a series of mass shootings.
On Tuesday, struck by her knowledge of elementary school aerial news and the fact that the victims were second-graders and educators like her mother, Lafferty thought she would try to learn privately about what happened in Texas. .
It did not work out.
“I think it lasted maybe five minutes before I heard my mother’s voice in my head, ‘Get out of your ass, kid.’ This is definitely your time, “Lafferty said.
Advocacy groups following Sandy Hook also expressed concern as news of the shooting spread.
“Over the past decade, we have warned all Americans, including elected politicians across the country, that if there is a mass shooting in Sandy Hook, then it could happen anywhere,” Poe Murray, president of the Newtown Action Alliance, said in a written article. . statement.
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, tweeted that “meaningless violence will only stop when Congress combines thoughts and prayers with action.”
Murphy acknowledged that the problem of gun violence will not be solved overnight. But, he said, that can be resolved.
“I understand that my Republican colleagues will not agree with everything I can support, but there is a common denominator we can find,” Murphy said. “But when we do something, we at least stop sending this quiet message of support to those killers whose brains are breaking, who see that the highest levels of government are doing nothing, shooting after a shooting.
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Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writer David Collins contributed to this report.
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