Mr. President.
14 kids dead.
In an elementary school in Texas right now.
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 were more mass shootings
than days in the year.
Our kids are living in fear.
Every single time they set foot
in the classroom because I
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 the hassle?
Of getting this job of putting
yourself in a position of authority.
If your answer is that as this
slaughter increases as our kids run
for their lives, we do nothing.
What are we doing? Why are you here?
Is 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 to 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 except
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 through the day,
kids would stand up and yell, monkey.
And a teacher or paraprofessional
would have to go over to that kid,
take them out of the classroom and
talk to them about what they had seen.
Worked 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 and fewer communities go through
what Sandy Hook has gone through,
what you ivaldi 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 and 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 that I may support,
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 ever
again sees a mass shooting.
That may not overnight cut in half.
The number of murders that happen in America.
It 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?
Yield the floor.