AOC on gun control at a Senate hearing

Brut America

"We can't even keep our kids safe from their schools being turned into a war zone." — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a Senate hearing on gun control.

Transcript

00:00Between 2009 and 2018, how many school shootings did the United States have?

00:07288.

00:09288. Now let's look globally.

00:12Our G7 partners, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom, combined.

00:18How many school shootings did those countries have?

00:22Five. Fifteen times more.

00:25In 10, almost 10 years.

00:28288 versus 5.

00:31This is not normal.

00:35Not only is it not normal, it is internationally embarrassing and delegitimizing to the United States.

00:44Because for all the billions and trillions that this body authorizes in the name of national security,

00:49we can't even keep our kids safe from their schools being turned into a war zone.

00:54Now let's talk about why.

00:56Let's talk about one thing more important to lobbyists and the gun industry than children,

01:03than houses of faith, than human beings.

01:05Let's talk about profit.

01:07Mr. Suplina, in 2020, 22.8 million guns were sold, reflecting a 64% increase from 2019, correct?

01:15Correct.

01:16In one year.

01:18And across the board, gun manufacturers and ammunition companies began to see record profits.

01:23Is that right?

01:24That's correct.

01:25Now let's put that into context.

01:28In 2020, again, more than 45,000 Americans died by gunfire, reflecting an almost three-fold increase from 2015.

01:37Are those statistics correct?

01:39That's accurate.

01:40So in your view, are you seeing a correlation between gun profits and gun deaths in the United States?

01:46Yes.

01:47This is about blood money.

01:49Between 2019 and 2021, two years, leading gun manufacturers Sturm and Ruger saw gross profits double to almost $280 million.

02:02In fact, during an earnings call, their CEO called the sales boom, quote, historic, ferocious, and that the future was bright.

02:10A month after that, an AR-556 pistol murdered 10 people at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

02:17Those profit margins, $280 million, went, go to lobbying.

02:24Is that correct?

02:25Much of that goes to lobbying, correct?

02:27Significant amounts go to lobbying, correct.

02:29And can you remind us what the gun industry is lobbying against when it deploys these lobbying resources?

02:36They are lobbying against every law that would regulate firearms, period.

02:43And can you briefly tell us how gun companies have poured extra profits directly into lobbying against gun reform?

02:50And as an advocate in this space, what have you seen?

02:53Just name, rattle off some of the measures that they have, just a few that they have lobbied against.

03:00Lobbied against, they've lobbied against background checks on all gun sales, which would, in fact, as was mentioned earlier,

03:07allow for the would-be criminal to obtain a firearm from a law-abiding citizen.

03:13Without a background check, the criminal would be breaking the law, but we could stop that.

03:17They've lobbied against red flag laws, which would temporarily deprive, after due process,

03:22a firearm from somebody who poses a threat to themselves or others.

03:26That is a court adjudication.

03:28For context, the NRA spent about $250 million in 2020 alone.

03:35That's more than twice the entire salary of Congress combined in one year lobbying against gun safety laws.

03:44There's also this discussion about anything but a gun, but that these are about violent people.

03:51But yet we aren't doing anything about addressing the actual root causes of misogyny,

03:56where two-thirds of mass shootings are connected to domestic violence,

04:00or the emergence of white supremacy, radicalization, mass incarceration, and poverty,

04:06and the connections between that and mass shootings in our communities.

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