Sen. Klobuchar: I’m So Tired of Some of My Colleagues Who Won’t Stand Up and Vote for Some Stricter National Gun Standards

GEIST: “Senator, some of these, the parents, we’re all parents around this table, you drop your child off at school the first day, there’s a photograph that’s really hit a lot of people, where you have a mom who’s taken off her shoes to sprint toward the school down that street, praying, hoping that her child is not among the shot, or God forbid, among the dead. So let’s talk practically, and we — we’ve had this conversation for what, I don’t know, 20 years now together about these morning after what can leadership do? What can your body, the Senate, do to step in and help this? The person who carried out this shooting, the warning signs were all over the place, on YouTube, on social media, legally purchased three guns very recently, according to police, had more guns at home as well. What more can be done from where you sit, senator?”
Klobuchar: “Well, I’m so tired of some of my colleagues who won’t stand up and vote for some stricter national gun standards. And this will not hurt hunters, we’re a proud hunting state of Minnesota, but it’s not one-size-fits-all for every shooting. You look at Uvalde, you look at Buffalo, you look at Connecticut, Florida, some common threads, better background checks, triggers if a number of guns are purchased at once, triggers on age, triggers on assault weapons. And one of the guns, there was a pistol, a shotgun, and a rifle used, all legally purchased in this case, but I believe one of them, the rifle, was some kind of assault weapon. And talking to the parents gathered there, including friends of mine, former employees who I’m close to that had kids in that room, one had three kids, watched two of her friends get shot, one in the stomach, one in the neck, these parents, of course, are focused and they’re focused on guns as has happened in the past. But I remember one of the Connecticut parents saying to me, you know, we have the courage through our grief — she lost her son — to come to Washington is the day the background check bill went down. To do this, and we’re advocating for a bill we know wouldn’t have saved our babies because the guns were in the home in that place, but we know it’ll save other kids. Why don’t these people have the courage to stand up and vote for it? We know what’s worked in other countries, we know what could work online to check for some of these things, and yet everyone is just stymied. And I am personally just about had it with how you can imagine that could be your kid in that church, your kid in that school, and it’s by the grace of the God that it wasn’t.”