Adams Delivers Floor Remarks on Gun Violence Epidemic
WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 18, 2023) — Today, Congresswoman Alma Adams (NC-12) delivered remarks from the floor of the United States House of Representatives on the mass shooting in Nashville, Tenn., the subsequent expulsion of two members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, and our country’s gun violence epidemic.
Raw video of the speech is available for media use here.
The speech is also available on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Text of the speech as prepared for delivery is below:
Today I rise because too often in our schools the sound of students talking and lockers clanking in hallways is giving way to silence, and violence.
Today I rise because desks that should be covered in gum are too often covered in blood: the blood of students and their teachers.
Today I rise because three nine-year-old children and three adults are dead in Tennessee, as well as the person who killed them.
Tennessee State Representatives Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson wanted to bring attention to this tragedy.
They wanted to honor the victims of the mass shooting at the Covenant School with action, instead of insulting their memories with silence.
From the floor of the TN House, they led the public gallery in chants of “no more silence”, “we have to do better”, and “gun reform now.”
Tennessee Republicans were so afraid of this message that they expelled Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the two Black representatives, for their actions.
These two courageous men knew, as we do, that we cannot wait to be saved from the gun epidemic. They knew there would be more dead.
Unfortunately, since the mass shooting in Nashville on March 27, over 900 additional people were killed by gun violence in our Country; 22 in Tennessee alone.
It makes me sick. It makes me livid that we continue to accept the status quo. That we are comfortable living in a country where at any time, our friends, family, and neighbors even our children and our grandchildren, can die a horrible death because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time where the wrong person had a gun.
We will be judged if we don’t act. Not only by history, not only by our God, but by our children who will inherit our country with this metastasized gun cancer still attached.
I am a Christian, and as someone who knows and reads and lives Scripture I can tell you, beyond a doubt, that the AR-15, the assault rifle, is the Golden Calf of Washington, D.C.
Too many people in the People’s House worship this idol and treat it with reverence; however, just like in Scripture, if we continue to worship this idol, the result will be physical and spiritual death.
I stand with Representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones.
"No more silence!"
"We have to do better!"
"Gun reform now!"
"No more silence!"
"We have to do better!"
"Gun reform now!"
Congresswoman Alma Adams represents North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District (Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, Cabarrus County). She serves on the House Education and the Workforce Committee as Ranking Member of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee, and on the House Agriculture Committee. She was first elected to Congress and took office in 2014, and is the longest serving member of North Carolina’s Congressional Democrats.
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