United States Senator from Connecticut Chris Murphy has delivered an impassioned speech just hours after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, in south-west Texas.
The school shooting has claimed the lives of 18 children and two adults, including a teacher and the gunman, while injuring others.
Mr Murphy came to Congress representing the district that included the Connecticut town and is now a Senator.
The Democrat formerly represented the town of Sandy Hook, where the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting took place, killing 26 people, including 20 children between the ages of five and 10.
Echoing the bloodshed of the Sandy Hook massacre, Mr Murphy made an emotional plea on the Senate floor on Tuesday, begging his colleagues to finally find a compromise: pass legislation to address the nation's continuing gun violence problem.
Senator Chris Murphy's speech in full
(Note: At the time of Senator Murphy's speech, there were 14 deaths reported. The death toll has since risen to 19.)
Mr President, there are 14 kids dead in an elementary school in Texas right now.
What are we doing? What are we doing?
Just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African-American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands.
What are we doing?
There were more mass shootings than days in the year.
Our kids are living in fear. Every single time they set foot in a classroom, they think they're going to be next.
What are we doing?
Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority?
What are we doing?
Why are you here?
If not, to solve a problem as existential as this.
This isn't inevitable. These kids weren't 'unlucky'. This only happens in this country, and nowhere else.
Nowhere else do kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day.
Nowhere else, do parents have to talk to their kids as I have had to do, about why they got locked into a bathroom and got told to be quiet for five minutes, just in case a bad man entered that building.
What are we doing?!
In Sandy Hook Elementary School, after those kids came back into those classrooms, they had to adopt a practice in which there would be a safe word that the kids would say if they started to get thoughts in their brain about what they saw that day.
In one classroom, that word was "monkey".
And over and over and over through the day, kids would stand up and yell, "monkey!" And a teacher or paraprofessional would have to go over to that kid, take them out of the classroom, talk to them about what they had seen, work with them through their issues.
Sandy Hook will never be the same.
This community in Texas will never, ever be the same.
Why? Why are we here?!
If not to try to make sure that fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook has gone through, what Uvalde is going through.
Our heart is breaking for these families.
Every ounce of love and thoughts and prayers we can send, we are sending.
Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way, to pass laws to make this less likely.
I understand my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything that I may support.
But there is a common denominator that we can find.
There is a place where we can achieve agreement. That may not guarantee that America never ever again sees a mass shooting.
That may not, overnight, cut in half the number of murders that happen in America.
It will not solve the problem of American violence by itself.
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.
What are we doing?
Why are we here?
What are we doing?"
Speaking to reporters afterward, Senator Murphy took aim at the Republicans' viewpoint that mass shootings are a problem of mental illness, not easy access to guns.
“We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world.
"You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we’re not an outlier on mental illness.
"We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their arms on firearms. That’s what makes America different.”
Reuters/ABC News
