As Democrats in the House of Representatives continued to call for votes on gun control in a sit-in that extended through Wednesday night into Thursday morning, delegates from Connecticut were at the helm of the protest.
It included Connecticut Representative John Larson, who led the sit-in with Georgia Democratic Representative John Lewis.
Republicans who control the House called it a publicity stunt. But Democrats called it a success, at least in bringing attention to their cause.
Connecticut Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty, whose district includes Newtown, was among the first House Democrats to take the floor on Wednesday. WNPR's Ray Hardman spoke to Esty about the sit-in Wednesday afternoon.
Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty: In the three-and-a-half years that I’ve been in Congress, three-and-a-half years since Sandy Hook, we have not been allowed a single vote in the House of Representatives to help stop gun violence in America, and the time has passed for moments of silence. It is time for us to act, and it’s time for us to vote.
WNPR’s Ray Hardman: Now I heard this this morning: “No Fly, No Buy.” What are some of the other measures that you’re looking at?
The two main pieces we’re looking at is “No Fly, No Buy,” which is the utterly common sense proposition that if you are too dangerous, because you are a suspected terrorist, if you are too dangerous to fly on an airplane in America, you should be too dangerous to buy a weapon, and that we saw with just horrific results last week in Orlando. And the other piece, which we’ve been calling for non-stop in over three years now, is to extend background checks to all sales of guns in America.
There’s a good probability that any gun control legislation that goes up for a vote would probably be voted down, but why is this still so important?
Because we are not powerless in the face of 30,000 gun deaths in America every year. These bills actually work to help save lives, and if I thought they didn’t, then I wouldn’t be asking for a vote, but they do. Over two million sales of guns to dangerous people have been stopped through the use of background checks in the last 20 years, and for every one of those families, that’s a life that was saved, and I know we can do better. People of Newtown know we can do better, and this is what we were sent to Washington to do as members of Congress.
How long are you and your colleagues prepared to sit in?
I’m going to do whatever I can. I think about Mark Barden, I think about other parents from Newtown who get up every day with their children having been ripped from them, and they still get up every day and they fight for greater justice and for gun safety in this country, and my colleagues and I need to do the same thing right here.
This report contains information from the Associated Press.
