“For the second time in a week, our nation grieves for multiple people shot without warning while going about their daily lives. 10 African-Americans were murdered and three other people injured in the supermarket shooting in Buffalo last week and 19 fourth-graders and two teachers were shot dead in Texas yesterday. The children were all in the same classroom when the gunman locked himself in and began firing.

“Just imagining the terror of those children should be enough for any civilized, sensible country to ban automatic and semi-automatic weapons, as Australia did in 1996 after their lone mass shooting.

“We must dig deep and truly ask why Americans accept a society where people are killed in schools, at church, in stores, at concerts or at work. We must know that any sane person is appalled and depressed that this happens in our country.

“The first responsibility of government is to protect the citizenry and yet it’s been 23 years since Columbine, 10 years since Sandy Hook, seven years since Charleston, five years since Las Vegas, and four years since Parkland. While these mass killings shock the nation, equally disturbing is the massive number of people, mostly young men, dying of gunshot wounds in our cities, including Newark.

“This is clear evidence that the failure to enact federal, common-sense gun control laws is an abject failure of government to protect its people. That is the simple truth and we should no longer hide from it.

“I call upon our citizens to vehemently demand that federal leadership pass stringent gun safety and gun violence legislation, much like we have in New Jersey. I further call upon our law enforcement agencies, health care agencies, our families, and our responsible gun owners to take serious and permanent action against this nightmare. As a nation, we must no longer stand for this because it doesn’t represent who we truly are.”

-          NEWARK –