One day after the Washington Navy Yard shooting, and nine months after the tragedy at Sandy Hook, Senator Richard Blumenthal is pleading again with congress to act on gun violence.
He took to the senate floor Tuesday, urging his colleagues to reform national gun laws.
In his speech, Blumenthal referenced the victims of Monday’s shooting,
“The shooting at the Washington Navy Yard makes clear that, as we said in the wake of Newtown, these kinds of mass killings can happen anywhere, any school, any community – in Newtown, the quintessential New England town or at the Washington Navy Yard, a supposedly secure military facility. And we need to make sure that it happens nowhere.”
Efforts to reform gun laws failed last April when the Senate rejected a bill that would have expanded background checks.
Blumenthal and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now say they’d combine that push with a mental health initiative and other commonsense measures aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them, like the mentally unstable and felons.
It’s a move that could help shore up the votes for gun reform that Democrats says they still don’t have to pass gun control proposals.