Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Rise Of Political Violence In America

Washington, D.C. - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor calling for an end to political violence and honoring the victims in yesterday's shootings in Utah and Colorado. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

I was shocked and horrified to learn about the murder of Charlie Kirk yesterday afternoon.

All of us in the Senate pray for Charlie's family, his wife, his kids. The loss they feel today is incomprehensible.

We thank all the first responders who were on the scene yesterday, who continue to work until the murderer is brought to justice.

We also pray for all those hurt yesterday in another act of senseless gun violence, in Evergreen High School in Colorado, where two students were critically injured at the hands of a lone gunman.

We pray for their recovery.

And these tragedies are a constant reminder to all of us of the immense destruction of gun violence and of inaction.

Now, no matter your political views, yesterday's attack was heinous, cowardly, and ought to make everyone sick to their stomachs.

Political violence is the enemy of democracy and we have an obligation, on all sides, to fight it at every turn.

We must condemn it whenever it arises, wherever it arises, including this heinous murder of Charlie Kirk.

But also, the politically motivated shooting of House members at a baseball practice, and the politically motivated murders of Melissa Hortman and her husband earlier this year in Minnesota, and the attacks on Former Speaker Pelosi and her husband, and the murder of business executives, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol, and so many other incidents of politically motivated barbarity.

These attacks are attacks on all of us, all of America.

And if we fail to quell the fires of political violence, regardless of where it comes from, it will become the norm.

There should be no finger pointing, because this is an attack on our democracy itself.

And if we fail to quell these fires, our democracy will be doomed.

We can disagree with our ideas, but not with weapons and bloodshed and killing.

And so we mourn the murder of Charlie Kirk and pray for his family.

We pray for those injured in Colorado.

And we must work together to bring political violence and the scourge of gun violence to a quick end.

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