‘Time for Congress to Get Off Its Ass’: Democrats Demand Action After 58 People Killed in Mass Shooting

‘Your Cowardice to Act Cannot Be Whitewashed by Thoughts and Prayers’

Democratic lawmakers are speaking our loudly and forcefully after a gunman opened fire on 22,000 people at a Las Vegas country music concert, killing at least 58 people, and wounding more than 500. 

“It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something,” Connecticut Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy said in a statement. Murphy has been one of the leaders in the Senate demanding gun control reform. Murphy was elected to the Senate just weeks before the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in his home state that killed 20 first grade students and six school officials.

“Nowhere but America do horrific large-scale mass shootings happen with this degree of regularity,” Sen. Murphy also said. “Last night’s massacre may go down as the deadliest in our nation’s history, but already this year there have been more mass shootings than days in the year.”

“This must stop. It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic. There are, and the thoughts and prayers of politicians are cruelly hollow if they are paired with continued legislative indifference.”

He also posted this tweet:

Fellow Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, also of Connecticut, took to Facebook, saying: “Congress refuses to act. I am more than frustrated, I am furious.”

U.S. Congressman Jim Himes, another Democrat of Connecticut, had a pointed message for his colleagues who are sending “thoughts and prayers,” while refusing to enact smart gun control laws that nine out of ten Americans support:

On Facebook, Himes slammed Congress for its refusal to act.

“Once again, Congress will retreat into grief and silence,” he posted, adding, “here we are, more than a year later,” from the Pulse nightclub mass shooting and terror attack. “Almost 5 years after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School took the lives of 26 innocents, including 20 children. And Congress. Has. Done. Nothing.”

Randy Brice, the Democrat who is challenging Speaker Paul Ryan for his congressional seat in Wisconsin, offered this:

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA):

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) retweeted his own tweet from June of 2016, after the Pulse attack. He siply added the hashtag “#LasVegas,” after having tagging it originally, “#Orlando.”

 

Former U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona, who was the victim of an assassination attempt at a constituents’ event in 2011, offered these thoughts:

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Image by Brookings Institution via Flickr and a CC license

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