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““What are we doing? Why are you here, if not to solve a problem as existential as this? ””
That was Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy addressing the Senate on Tuesday afternoon, responding to reports that 18 children and three adults were shot and killed in a Uvalde, Texas elementary school.
Murphy was elected to Congress in 2012, just a month before 20 children and six teachers were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. The Democratic senator has advocated for gun-control and gun-safety bills in the decade since, and Tuesday’s massacre in Texas spurred him to give an emotional speech on the Senate floor.
“I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees to beg my colleagues, find a path forward here,” he said. “Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”
He repeatedly asked, “What are we doing? Why are we here?” in his roughly five-minute speech, calling out Congressional inaction on guns following repeated mass shootings across the country. The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday is the 27th school shooting in the United States so far this year. And it comes less than two weeks after a gunman opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 Black shoppers and workers in what officials have described as a hate crime.
“This only happens in this country, and nowhere else” said Murphy. “Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day … Nowhere else does that happen but here in the United States of America. And it is a choice, it is our choice to let it continue. What are we doing?”
Video of his speech went viral on Tuesday evening, leading Murphy’s name to trend on Twitter.
Here is the full text of Murphy’s speech:
Mr. President:
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 are more mass shootings than days in the year.
Our kids are living in fear every single time they set foot in a classroom because 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 of the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority, if your answer — as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives — we do nothing?
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 little 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 told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen but here in the United States of America. And it is a choice, it is our choice to let it continue
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. If they started to get nightmares during the day, reliving stepping over their classmates bodies as they tried to flee the school. In one classroom that word was “monkey.” And over and over and over throughout the day, kids would stand up and yell “Monkey!” And a teacher or paraprofessional would have to go over to the kid, take them out of the classroom talk to them about what they had seen, work them through their issues.
Sandy Hook will never, ever 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, fewer communities, will have to 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.
But I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees to beg my colleagues, find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.
I understand my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything I may suggest, 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 again sees a mass shooting, that may not overnight cut in half the number of murders that happen in America. That 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?
I yield the floor.
