Wednesday saw yet another mass shooting in the United States of America, this one killing five people in addition to the gunman. Thursday is the one-year anniversary of the House passing a bill requiring universal background checks in gun sales. That bill is still held up in the Senate, Mitch McConnell’s legislative graveyard.
Poll after poll finds up to 90% public support for universal background checks—but Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans will not allow a bill to even get a vote.
“In the year Mitch McConnell has refused a vote in the Senate, 40,000 people have been shot and killed,” Sen. Chris Murphy tweeted Thursday. “I want you to hear a few of their stories. It's important.”
The ensuing thread is a must-read—and the pictures of victims must be truly seen.
“On March 2019, 1 month after #HR8 got to the Senate, Shelby Verderosa was home with her six-month-old daughter when she was shot and killed in Phoenix,” Murphy begins. “As a new mom Shelby ‘was doing everything she possibly could to make sure her daughter had the best life,’ said her cousin.”
And “Lamar Sharp was at a picnic in Kansas City in April, two months after #HR8 got to the Senate, when he heard gunshots. Instead of running toward safety, he ran to save his friend's two-year-old grandson and was shot three times. He died five days before his 32nd birthday.”
It goes on and on. Right up until Wednesday’s mass shooting in Milwaukee. And, we grieve to know, it will go on into the future. No single bill would solve America’s gun violence problem, but the fact that Republicans will not allow through a modest plan with nearly universal support shows just how far we are from fixing this and saving our own lives.