'None
of This Is Inevitable':
While President Donald
Trump was ripped by critics for predictably announcing that the mass shooting
in Sutherland, Texas on Sunday that left 26 people dead does not represent a
"guns situation," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) was receiving
widespread applause for speaking with impassioned frustration about the failure
of U.S. lawmakers to address the "epidemic" of gun violence and
murder that has gripped the nation in recent decades.
"None of this is
inevitable," Murphy said Sunday in a statement that soon went viral.
"I know this because no other country endures this pace of mass carnage
like America. It is uniquely and tragically American. As long as our nation
chooses to flood the county with dangerous weapons and consciously let those
weapons fall into the hands of dangerous people, these killings will not
abate."
Meanwhile, Trump took
the opposite approach on the subject, blaming the violence on the "mental
health" of the gunman and suggesting it was too early to talk about gun violence
as a political issue.
As many noted, Trump himself signed an order
earlier this year revoking a measure that specifically sought to make it harder
for those with mental health issues to get a gun.
"We have a lot of
mental health problems in our country, as do other countries, but this isn't a
guns situation," Trump said during an overseas press conference in Japan
on Monday.
"We could go into it but it's a little bit soon to go into it.
Fortunately somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite
direction, otherwise it wouldn't have been as bad as it was, it would have been
much worse."
Murphy, also rejected
Trump's essential argument—familiar in pro-gun and right-wing circles—that
"a good guy with a gun" is the best answer to "a bad guy with a
guy."
Read Murphy's in full
statement below:
"The paralysis
you feel right now – the impotent helplessness that washes over you as news of
another mass slaughter scrolls across the television screen – isn’t real. It's
a fiction created and methodically cultivated by the gun lobby, designed to
assure that no laws are passed to make America safer, because those laws would
cut into their profits.
"My heart sunk to the pit of my stomach, once again,
when I heard of today's shooting in Texas. My heart dropped further when I
thought about the growing macabre club of families in Las Vegas and Orlando and
Charleston and Newtown, who have to relive their own day of horror every time
another mass killing occurs.
"None of this is
inevitable. I know this because no other country endures this pace of mass
carnage like America. It is uniquely and tragically American. As long as our
nation chooses to flood the county with dangerous weapons and consciously let
those weapons fall into the hands of dangerous people, these killings will not
abate.
"As my colleagues
go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political
support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the
floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city
streets.
"Ask yourself – how can you claim that you respect human life
while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by
the vast majority of your constituents.
"My heart breaks
for Sutherland Springs. Just like it still does for Las Vegas. And Orlando. And
Charleston. And Aurora. And Blacksburg. And Newtown. Just like it does every
night for Chicago. And New Orleans. And Baltimore. And Bridgeport.
"The
terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do
absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic. The time is now for Congress
to shed its cowardly cover and do something."