Son of Buffalo victim pleads with Congress on guns
WASHINGTON — The son of Ruth Whitfield, an 86-yearold woman killed when a gunman opened fire in a racist attack on Black shoppers in Buffalo, N.Y., challenged Congress Tuesday to act against the “cancer of white supremacy” and the nation’s epidemic of gun violence.
Garnell Whitfield Jr.’s emotional testimony comes as lawmakers are working furiously to strike a bipartisan agreement on gun safety measures in the aftermath of back-to-back mass shootings. Ten days after the shooting death of his mother and nine others in New York, another 18-year-old gunman with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 schoolchildren and two teachers.
“What are you doing? You were elected to protect us,” Whitfield Jr. told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Is there nothing that you personally are willing to do to stop the cancer of white supremacy and the domestic terrorism it inspires?” he asked. “If there is nothing then, respectfully, senators, you should yield your positions of authority and influence to others that are willing to lead on this issue.”
The hearing is the first of two this week as families of the victims and survivors of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde appear at public hearings and events on Capitol Hill to show the human toll of America’s gun violence and urge Congress to act.
Pressing for a deal, President Biden met Tuesday with Sen. Chris Murphy, a key Democratic negotiator, who has worked most of his career trying to curb the nation’s mass-shooting scourge after the heartbreaking slaughter of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary in his home state of Connecticut a decade ago.
Murphy said his goal is to try to get an agreement this week, but he added that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been clear that “we need some extra time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s that will get it.”
Also on Tuesday, actor Matthew McConaughey, who is from Uvalde, made his rounds to Senate offices on the Hill before heading to the White House to open the daily briefing. McConaughey, who earlier this year considered a run for governor of Texas, gave a fullthroated speech on the importance of taking legislative action “to make the loss of these lives matter.”
“We want secure and safe schools and we want gun laws that won’t make it so easy for the bad guys to get the damn guns,” he said.
On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee is expected to hear from more victims’ families and from fourth-grader Miah Cerrillo, who captured Americans’ attention after she described covering herself in her dead classmate’s blood and playing dead to survive the shooting rampage in Uvalde.