Democrats on Wednesday mounted a filibuster on the Senate floor to urge action against gun violence, days after the terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida, marked the deadliest mass shooting in US history.
The talking filibuster was led by Chris Murphy, a senator for whom the issue has been deeply personal since the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in his home state of Connecticut.
Democrats are seeking a vote on two measures in the wake of the Orlando shooting: one that would bar individuals on the FBI watch list from being able to purchase firearms and another to require universal background checks.
“I’m going to remain on this floor until we get some signal, some sign … that we can get a path forward on addressing this epidemic in a meaningful, bipartisan way,” Murphy said.
At least seven Democrats protested alongside Murphy, who began speaking at 11.21am on Wednesday amid a debate over an unrelated spending bill. The appeal was also given a stamp of approval from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who tweeted:
Clinton, along with Barack Obama, has similarly called for denying suspected terrorists access to firearms and other stricter gun laws after Omar Mateen killed 49 and injured 53 more at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando on Sunday.
Florida senator Bill Nelson invoked the tragedy while participating in the filibuster, reading aloud a statement from a trauma surgeon in Orlando against the backdrop of a poster featuring a pair of bloody shoes.
The shoes were “brand new, not even a week old”, wrote surgeon Joshua Corsa. “On these shoes, soaked between its fibers, is the blood of 54 innocent human beings.”
“I don’t know which were gay, which were straight, which were black, or which were Hispanic. What I do know is that they came to us in wave upon wave of suffering, screaming, and death.”
The debate over gun control has remained stymied in Congress amid opposition from Republicans in both chambers. But at least some Republicans, including a group of senators facing tough re-election battles this year, have signaled they are potentially open to a compromise on preventing those on the FBI watch list from buying guns.
The issue last came before the Senate in December after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, in which 14 people were killed and another 22 were injured. Competing measures offered by Democrats and Republicans were voted down at the time, as was another attempt to expand background checks.
Republicans, along with the National Rifle Association, have argued that many individuals are erroneously placed on the terror watch list and pushed a proposal that would impose a 72-hour waiting period for such cases.
Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s legislative arm, said the group’s position remained unchanged after Orlando while insisting: “Gun laws don’t deter terrorists.”
But presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump indicated even he might disagree, announcing on Wednesday that he planned to meet with gun rights leaders to discuss potential ways to restrict suspected terrorists from obtaining firearms.
Democrats who took to the Senate floor highlighted the scourge of gun violence across America, from mass shootings at movie theaters and schools to the daily deaths and injuries in cities like Chicago.
A five-year average of data from the Centers for Disease Control estimates that roughly 91 Americans are killed with firearms each day. There are nearly 33,000 gun-related deaths each year, 60% of which are suicides, while 12,000 rank as murders.
Murphy said the failure to act on any gun safety reforms whatsoever made members of Congress complicit in the murders.
“I can’t tell you how hard it is to look into the eyes of the families of those little boys and girls who were killed in Sandy Hook,” Murphy said, “and tell them that almost four years later, we’ve done nothing, nothing at all, to reduce the likelihood that that will happen again to another family.”
