Sen. Coons: “We in the Senate need to have a better answer” on gun violence prevention

WASHINGTON - Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Co-Chair of the Law Enforcement Caucus, discussed the shooting in Uvalde, Texas during a Judiciary Committee nomination hearing for ATF Director nominee Steven Dettelbach. His remarks are below.

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Sen. Coons:…I have genuinely struggled today. As a number of reporters were just talking to me in the hallway, I, my wife, and my whole family-- our heart is broken for parents, and teachers, and faculty, and community members, and school children, who are today, living through every family's worst nightmare. To have, again, 19 elementary school students massacred in their classroom--to have their teachers killed defending them, and to have some describe this as unthinkable, unimaginable, when in fact it is entirely too predictable now.

The pain that the Robb Elementary School community and that Uvalde, Texas is living through today is perhaps incomprehensible for those of us who have children, but it is entirely predictable. So I'll make a bold prediction. It will happen again, and again, until we collectively decide to find a path forward to responsibly address it.

And we in the Senate need to have a better answer. While I am a praying man and believe in the power of prayer, I am sick to death of saying that my thoughts and prayers are with parents who are today waking up to the incomprehensible horror of having their child massacred at school.

I know not one particular law that we could pass here will prevent every such tragedy. But we have to do more. We have to make it harder for individuals to get access to weapons who have demonstrated the capacity, or the potential, to use them to harm themselves or their families. And we have to do more to address gun violence.

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