Justice

It ought to be a shock to all of us, as a nation and as a people. It ought to obsess us. It ought to lead to some sort of transformation. That's what happened in other countries when they experienced similar tragedies.
In the United Kingdom, in Australia, when just a single mass shooting occurred in those countries, they understood that there was nothing ordinary about this kind of carnage. They endured great heartbreak, but they also mobilized and they changed. And mass shootings became a great rarity. And yet, here in the United States, after the round the clock coverage on cable news, after the heartbreaking interviews with families, after all the speeches and all the punditry and all the commentary, nothing happens.

No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None.
Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. The murder rate with guns is ten times what it is in other developed nations. And there's nothing inevitable about it. It comes about because of decisions we make or fail to make. And it falls upon us to make it different.

We cannot stop every act of senseless violence. We cannot know every evil that lurks in troubled minds. But if we can prevent even one tragedy like this, save even one life, spare other families what these families are going through, certainly we've got an obligation to try.

I do not accept that we cannot find a common sense way to preserve our traditions, including our basic second amendment freedoms and the rights of law abiding gun owners, while at the same time reducing the gun violence that unleashes so much mayhem on a regular basis.

But the question is, do we care enough? Do we care enough to keep standing up for the country that we know is possible, even if it’s hard, and even if it’s politically uncomfortable? Do we care enough to sustain the passion and the pressure to make our communities safer and our country safer? Do we care enough to do everything we can to spare other families the pain that is felt here today?

Our tears are not enough. Our words and our prayers are not enough. If we really want to honor these twelve men and women, if we really want to be a country where we can go to work and go to school and walk our streets free from senseless violence, without so many lives being stolen by a bullet from a gun, then we're gonna have to change. We're gonna have to change.

The cynical truth is that the Navy Yard murders had neither the kinds of victims nor the story that sustains media interest and public revulsion.

No one will give you change. You have to work for it. You have to earn it not by screaming, but by working hard, by believing in yourself, by proving yourself. There are windows, but if you are radical, no one will talk to you. And that window will shut.

The foundations of equal rights are threatened by the hyper-sexualization that touched children between six and twelve years old.

I don't see myself as a hero, because what I'm doing is self-interested; I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and, therefore, no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.

One thing that is perfectly clear to me in my district, and I think is true in many other districts from speaking to other members, is that there is no desire, no desire, on the part of people to be the world's policeman.

Opposition is different from terrorism. Opposition is a political movement. Opposition doesn't mean to take-- armament and kill people and destroy everything. Do you call the people in Los Angeles in the '90s, do you call them rebels or opposition? What would the British call the rebels less than two years ago in London? Do-- did they call them opposition or rebels? Why should we call them opposition? They are rebels. They are not rebels even, they are terror-- they are behaving-- this opposition, opposing country or government by behaving by barbecuing head, by eating the hearts of your victim? Is that opposition?