Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy on Florida Shooting: ‘We Are Responsible’

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) took the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon with the intended purpose of discussing immigration legislation. Instead, he took a moment to castigate his Senate colleagues for having failed to legislate stricter gun laws as reports emerged of a school mass shooting in Florida. “Turn on your television right now. You’re going to see scenes of children running for their lives,” said Murphy, who dealt with the Newtown massacre firsthand. “What looks to be the 19th school shooting in this country and we have not even hit March. Let me just note once again for my colleagues: This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America. This epidemic of mass slaughter. This scourge of school shooting after school shooting. It only happens here, not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction. We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.”