A progressive foreign policy isn’t just looking at the back-end of terrorism, but is also looking at the front-end of terrorism. - Chris Murphy

Why did you sign up for this job if you are not prepared to use it — if you're not prepared to use it to try to solve big problems?

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...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?

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. Nowhere else do kids go to school and think they might be shot that day. It's a choice and it's our choice to let it continue. I'm here to beg my colleagues. Find a way to pass laws to make this less likely.