Washington (December 14, 2014) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) released the following statement to mark the second anniversary of the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“There have been nearly 100 school shootings in the two years since the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School when the lives of 20 children and six adults were cut far too short at the hands of one mentally-ill young man. Yet again on Friday, another tragic school shooting in Oregon has left one student in critical condition and two other students wounded.
“This epidemic of gun violence has forced too many American families to cope with grief and fear. We mourn and we pray for them, as we did for the people of Newtown and for all the communities across the country who move forward bravely in the wake of such profound loss.
“Senseless gun violence kills or injures more than 10,000 children a year and guns kill 30,000 Americans every year. It is a preventable public health crisis in every sense of the word, and it is vital that we treat it is as such.
“We need background checks on all gun sales, including private sales and purchases made at gun shows. And we must make access to mental health services a priority, to provide care to those who need it and keep guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill. We need to ban assault weapons that are for combat, not our neighborhoods and get rid of high capacity magazines.
“Now is the time to recommit ourselves to ending the plague of gun violence in America. Now is the time to continue growing a movement of activists to finally loosen the stranglehold the NRA and gun lobby extremists have on our country. Together, we can save lives and stop any more of these tragedies before they happen.”
Senator Markey has consistently fought to enact commonsense gun control reforms. In 1994 in the House of Representatives, Markey was successful in his bipartisan effort to get President Bill Clinton to place an emergency moratorium on the importation of military style assault weapons from China. In May, Senator Markey introduced bicameral legislation to fund research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on gun violence prevention and firearms safety. The legislation calls for $10 million each year for six years beginning in fiscal year 2015. Senator Markey is also the author of “The Handgun Trigger Safety Act” to ensure that only authorized users can operate handguns.
