Massacre opens old wounds left rampage in 2012
‘What are we doing?’ asks ex-Sandy Hook congressman
HARTFORD, Conn. — Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who came to Congress representing Sandy Hook, begged his colleagues to finally pass legislation addressing the nation’s gun violence problem as a school shooting unfolded Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas.
Murphy took to the Senate floor and demanded that lawmakers do what they failed to do after 26 elementary school students and educators were killed almost a decade ago in Newtown, Conn. Congress has been unable to pass substantial gun violence legislation since the collapse of a bipartisan Senate effort after that shooting.
“What are we doing?” Murphy demanded. The Democrat who represented Newtown as a
U.S. congressman urged his colleagues to find a compromise.
“I’m here on this floor to beg — to literally get down on my hands and knees — to beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely,” he said.
He told reporters afterward that he was working with colleagues, particularly reaching out to Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, to see if they could muster any bipartisan support for gun violence legislation.
“I just don’t understand why people here think we’re powerless,” Murphy later told reporters. “We aren’t.”
Tuesday’s shooting at Robb Elementary School in Texas appears similar to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. On Dec. 14, 2012, a 20-year-old man shot his way into the locked Connecticut building, then killed 20 first-graders and six educators with an AR-15-type rifle that was legally purchased by his mother.
The shooter killed himself as police arrived. Before going to the school, he fatally shot his mother at their Newtown home.
A report by Connecticut’s child advocate said the Sandy Hook shooter’s severe and deteriorating mental health problems, his preoccupation with violence and access to his mother’s weapons “proved a recipe for mass murder.”
Erica Lafferty, daughter of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the slain principal of Sandy Hook, said the time to take action had long passed.
“Thoughts and prayers didn’t bring my mother back after she was gunned down in a hallway at #SandyHook - they also won’t bring the 15 murdered at #RobbElementaryschool back to life,” she tweeted.
Advocacy groups that formed after the Connecticut shooting also expressed dismay.
“For the past decade, we have warned all Americans, including elected politicians across the nation, that if a mass shooting can happen in Sandy Hook then it can happen anywhere,” said Po Murray, chair of the Newtown Action Alliance, in a written statement.
“We have begged presidents, all members of Congress, governors and state representatives to strengthen the federal and state gun laws to keep our families and our communities safe,” she said.
Murphy acknowledged the problem of gun violence won’t be solved overnight.
“I understand my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything that I may support, but there is a common denominator that we can find,” he said. “But by doing something, we at least stop sending this quiet message of endorsement to these killers whose brains are breaking, who see the highest levels of government doing nothing, shooting after shooting.”