CT Dems Use Coming 13th Sandy Hook Anniversary to Push Gun Control
by AWR Hawkins · BreitbartU.S. Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), together with various Connecticut Democrats in the U.S. House, are poised to use the upcoming 13th anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary attack to push more gun control.
CT Insider noted that Murphy, Blumenthal, and Connecticut Reps. Jahana Hayes (D) and Rosa L. DeLauro (D), took part in a press conference Thursday focused on more gun control.
Murphy said,
…We should be passing laws every single year. I wish we were, but we’re going to wake up every day with the confidence that our cause is so righteous, is so righteous that if we do the the work there will be more and more moments like…[the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act during] summer in 2022 when we can make another difference and save thousands of other lives.
Hayes said, “I know that we can do something as members of Congress. I know that we can do something as elected officials.”
“…I’m really sick and tired of every conversation about gun violence is not about taking guns away from people or gun ownership,” she added. “I have colleagues who don’t even want to do the easy things like background checks, or safe gun storage, or even collecting data. So, miss me with your thoughts and prayers. I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
DeLauro also voiced support for more gun control, while warning that it may take some time to achieve it. “It may not [come], I’ll be honest with you, in the next year and a half or two years, but, by God, we have to never let up until we make it happen, and it will happen because of the will of the people,” she said.
Blumenthal urged his fellow gun control proponents to stay in the fight, saying, “I’ll be very blunt. It is a time of despair and some feel defeatism, but we don’t have the luxury of despair or defeatism. We don’t have the luxury of putting our heads in the sand. We don’t have the luxury of despair or defeatism. We need to keep fighting.”
A gun control bill pushed in the wake of Sandy Hook was sponsored by then Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) and it sought new point-of-sale gun controls. However, on April 14, 2013, Manchin appeared on “Face the Nation” and admitted the gun control package would not have prevented the Sandy Hook attack.
The guns used by the attacker were legally purchased and legally owned by the attacker’s mother. He killed his mother with one rifle, “stole several weapons and went to Sandy Hook Elementary School” to carry out his attack, according to the Portsmouth Herald.
The Manchin-Toomey gun bill failed to pass in the Democrat-controlled Senate on April 17, 2013.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.