Connecticut’s two U.S. senators joined members of the state’s LGBTQ community and gun violence prevention advocates in marking the one-year anniversary of the Orlando nightclub shooting on Monday. Fifty people were killed and 53 injured in the mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando.
The senators say Orlando and other mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, Aurora, Colorado, and San Bernardino, California can be blamed on weak gun control laws and congressional failure to act on such measures.
Shortly after Orlando, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy led a filibuster in the Senate in an unsuccessful attempt to get tighter federal gun laws. He says with Republican President Donald Trump now in power, things are worse.
“Combined with this nation’s loose gun laws, the rhetoric coming from this president poses a real danger to everyone in this country, but in particular vulnerable populations that are the subject of discrimination and the subject of hate.”
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal blames his colleagues in Congress and the state legislatures for being beholden to the National Rifle Association.
“What needs to change? The representatives in Congress and in the state houses need to change and that’s where the NRA’s grip needs to be broken.”
In the meantime, the lawmakers say they’ll continue to a push for federal background checks, and tighter restrictions on the purchase of assault rifles and high capacity magazines.
