Sen. Chris Murphy after Texas school shooting: 'What are we doing?'

In a speech on the Senate floor following Tuesday’s deadly mass shooting at a Texas elementary school, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., delivered an emotional plea to his fellow lawmakers in Congress to address gun violence.

“What are we doing? What are we doing?” Murphy said. “Days after a shooter walked into a grocery to gun down African American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands. What are we doing?”

Murphy’s remarks came shortly after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that 14 students and one teacher were killed by an 18-year-old shooter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. The gunman also died. [The current death toll, according to AP, stands at 19 children and at least two adults.]

“Our kids are living in fear every single time they step foot in a classroom because they think they are going to be next,” Murphy said. “Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job if your answer is that as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing. What are we doing?”

The shooting in Texas comes 10 days after 10 people were killed at a grocery store in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, N.Y., and is the deadliest school shooting since February 2018, when 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

In Murphy’s home state of Connecticut, 26 people, including 20 children, were killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December 2012.

“I am here on this floor, to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues,” Murphy said. “Find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”