- Do you feel safe at school?
Why not?
- Because I don't want it to happen again.
- And you think it's gonna happen again?
- I thank you all for letting me be here and speak out,
but I wish something will change,
not only for our kids but every single kid in the world,
because schools are not safe anymore.
- And as her voice, we demand action.
We seek a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
We understand that for some reason, to some people,
to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns
that guns are more important than children.
So, at this moment we ask for progress.
We seek to raise the age
to purchase these weapons from 18 to 21 years of age.
We seek red-flag laws, stronger background checks.
We also want to repeal gun manufacturers'
liability immunity.
- Once the blood is rinsed away
from the bodies of our loved ones
and scrubbed off the floors of the schools and supermarkets
and churches, the carnage from each scene
is erased from our collective conscience,
and we return again to nostalgia.
- To the lawmakers who feel that we do not need
stricter gun laws, let me paint a picture for you.
My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck,
two on his back, and another on his left leg
caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15.
As I clean his wounds, I can feel pieces
of that bullet in his back.
Shrapnel will be left inside of his body
for the rest of his life.
Now I want you to picture that exact scenario
for one of your children.
- The laws being discussed
are already implemented in cities across this country.
We have decades of evidence proving they do not work.
- Assault weapons like the AR-15 are known for three things --
how many rounds they fire,
the speed at which they fire those rounds, and body count.
This radicalized 18-year-old adult
should have never been able to have access to the weapons
he used to perpetrate this attack,
and the laws need to be enacted
to ensure it never happens again.
- Every year, over 110,000 people
are shot or killed by gun violence.
So, that means nearly a million lives have been
directly devastated
since I laid in that hospital, looked up at that television,
and watched the members of this chamber debate this topic.
- Every single day,
the politicians who fail to take action
ignore the majority of Americans who want stricter gun laws.
You tell our children protecting them matters
less than protecting the status quo.
- So, why is no one holding the gun industry accountable
for its dangerous practices?
In 2005, at the behest of the NRA,
Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act,
which insulates the industry from most legal threats.
And, again, at the behest of the NRA,
Congress passed the Tiahrt amendment,
a budget rider that purports to limit sharing of data
about guns used in crimes,
which keeps the industry out of the conversation
about how criminals get armed.
These laws have to go.
- The opposition has always been and is still today
a genuine concern that these policies suffer from serious
constitutional and practical defects,
that they will not have
the impact you promise people they will.
And we have always proposed alternatives that would be
more effective and less constitutionally suspect.
What we have rarely been met with are open ears.
- We are facing a crisis that is killing more Americans than war,
a crisis that is now the number-one cause of death
for our young people.