On the third night of the Democratic Convention, the theme of gun violence took center stage. The above video features Christine Leinonen, the mother of an Orlando shooting victim. Leinonen delivered a tearful speech, in which she called for action and discussed how her son was murdered with a gun that could shoot 30 rounds in one minute.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy then took the stage to express his frustration at the recent Senate gun filibuster that ended in deadlock. During those 15 hours, his powerful speech paid tribute to teacher Anne Marie Murphy, who died while protecting a Sandy Hook student during a horrific massacre.
Here, Murphy delivered an appropriately outraged speech, in which he declared, “The Republican Congress has done absolutely nothing to prevent the next massacre. It stokes inside me a sense of outrage that I’ve never felt before.” He believes there should be “no reason to feel helpless about the horrifying trajectory of cascading massacres. We can change this.” Murphy knows all too well how many of his fellow senators are funded by the NRA, and he argued for urgency in taking Washington D.C. back from the gun lobby: “I’ve had enough … We’ve had enough!”
Murphy’s speech can be seen below.