[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 133 (Tuesday, September 6, 2016)]
[House]
[Page H5075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      IT IS TIME WE LISTEN AND ACT

  (Mr. KENNEDY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Speaker, before heading to the airport earlier 
today, I met with a group of mothers from the Massachusetts chapter of 
Moms Demand Action.
  Even in a State with some of the strictest gun laws in the country, 
headlines of lives lost or forever altered by gun violence are 
commonplace: ``Boston shooting gravely injures man''; ``Two dead, two 
injured overnight in Boston shootings''; ``11-year-old boy shot in the 
face in Abington home''--all these from the last 2 weeks alone.
  In the time since we have last voted in this Chamber, guns have taken 
the lives of thousands of Americans in every corner of this country; 
and in the weeks to come, they will take thousands more.
  You cannot tell me we are powerless as men, women, and children carry 
the wounds of our inaction. You cannot tell me that the answer to this 
bloodshed is more guns capable of causing greater damage with less 
regulation; and you cannot tell grieving families that they are just in 
our thoughts and prayers, but that their memories are just not strong 
enough to spur action that could prevent another gun from falling into 
the wrong hands.
  Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and colleagues are 
crying out for this body to address this Nation's epidemic of gun 
violence. It is time we listen and act.

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