In light of recent events in Orlando and other shootings in the past year, the Senate Democrats staged a filibuster on June 15. The filibuster was started by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. This filibuster is being done to help change gun laws in the United States.
One statement that Sen. Murphy made was "There is a new-found imperative for this body to find a way to come together and take action, to try to do our part to stem this epidemic of gun violence and in particular this epidemic of mass shootings." This quote comes from The Huffington Post. He is right though. Something needs to change so that these mass shootings will stop. People are buying the same type of weapon to commit these tragedies far too easy. It should be a lot harder for people to buy this type of weapon than it currently is. Now I am not saying all guns should be harder to obtain, just the ones that are deemed weapons of mass destruction. Granted, Americans have civil liberties and civil rights, but buying weapons of mass destruction should not be a right or a liberty. Sen. Murphy is proposing a bill that will make background checks on gun buyers even stricter than the one that currently exists. Senate Republicans are having issues with this because it can infringe on a person's civil liberties. Murphy also wants to create a watch-list but there are many critics of this list. This list would be based off of the no-fly list and there are people on that list for a variety of reasons and it become very difficult for innocent people to clear their names if they are on that list so it would become close to impossible for these people to buy guns. This is not bad in all cases. There are plenty of terrorists on the no-fly list so having a watch-list of who buys guns could potentially prevent more mass shootings in the future. This filibuster is supported by the president. This filibuster started around 11:30 A.M. and is expected to continue for however long the Democrats deem necessary. This filibuster is very important to changing violence in the United States.
At least one good thing has come of this filibuster so far. Both parties agree that something needs to be done about potential terrorists buying weapons. Homeland Security has even said that terrorists being able to buy guns and weapons is a homeland security issue.
Thank you to The Huffington Post.