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WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03) spoke on the House floor criticizing Congressional inaction to prevent school shootings. Trahan, the mother of 8 and 12-year-old daughters, delivered the floor speech just 48 hours after three 9-year-old children and three faculty members were murdered in a school shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.

“I have to go home tomorrow and loo my 8-year-old daughter in her eyes one week before she turns 9 and tell her that three more kids were shot and killed in their classroom, but mama can’t get half of her colleagues in the Congress to care enough to do anything about it,” Congresswoman Trahan said. “How can anyone in this chamber be okay with telling their kid or their grandkids that? How can you see the kids who are taking pictures right outside on the Capitol steps and do nothing to prevent their school from being next? How can we call ourselves the greatest country in the world when its elected leaders sit on their hands while children are murdered hiding beneath their desks? We can’t, and to those deflecting or giving up, you should be ashamed.”

CLICK HERE or the image below to view Trahan’s speech on the House floor:

Trahan’s remarks as delivered are embedded below:

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Congresswoman Lori Trahan

Remarks as Delivered

Floor Speech on School Shootings

March 29, 2023

Madam Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart and a level of anger shared by millions of Americans – millions of parents. On Monday, three nine-year-old children and three adults were gunned down at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter, armed with not one, but two assault weapons, broke into the school and stole the lives of innocent people simply going about their day.\

For my colleagues across the aisle not keeping track, the massacre was the 130th mass shooting of the year. It was the thirteenth school shooting of 2023, and that’s only if you count the times someone was injured or killed when a gun went off on school grounds.

Thirteen times over the past three months, parents have dropped their children at the bus stop or at school. They told them they love them, to have a great day, and that they’d see them when they got home. And then they got the call that every parent fears – the one that wakes us up in the middle of the night.

Thirteen times this year, parents in a city or town hung up that phone or turned off their tv and raced to their kid’s school. Thirteen times, parents waited behind police tape hoping to hear something about their son or daughter.

Madam Speaker, how many more times are we going to let this happen? How many more times can my colleagues across the aisle tweet their thoughts and prayers, but say that their hands are tied on gun safety legislation? How many more Christmas cards of members of Congress holding AR-15s do we need to see while students in their classrooms practice active shooter drills?

School shooting after school shooting, Congress has had the opportunity to act. We have the legislation to ban assault weapons like the rifles used in Nashville on Monday. We have legislation to require background checks on every gun purchase so firearms aren’t falling into the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. And we have legislation to prevent someone convicted of a hate crime from being able to purchase a gun.

But what this chamber doesn’t have enough of is willpower – doesn’t have enough courage – to act. This inaction is shameful, and as a parent, it’s disgusting.

Apparently, the Republican leadership in the House thinks that the biggest issue facing our children today are the books in their library. Because while we have yet to take up a bill to stop [gun violence] – the number one killer of our children in America – this chamber passed a bill last week to politicize our kids’ education. A bill, by the way, that they didn’t even have unanimous Republican support for.

I mean, what are we doing here? I have to go home tomorrow and look my 8-year-old daughter in her eyes one week before she turns 9 and tell her that three more kids were shot and killed in their classroom, but mama can’t get half of her colleagues in the Congress to care enough to do anything about it.

How can anyone in this chamber be okay with telling their kids or their grandkids that? How can you see the kids who are taking pictures right outside on the Capitol steps and do nothing to prevent their school from being next? How can we call ourselves the greatest country in the world when its elected leaders sit on their hands while children are murdered hiding beneath their desks? We can’t, and to those of you deflecting or giving up, you should be ashamed.

Madam Speaker, I implore you to go back to your party’s leadership. Go back to Speaker McCarthy and tell him that we need to end the gun violence epidemic that’s plaguing our children. Do it before it’s too late for another school – for another family.

I yield back.

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