CT Lawmakers Call for Ban on Assault Weapons

Three Connecticut Congress members are urging their colleagues to ban assault-style weapons after the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were killed and 53 were injured early Sunday morning.

U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and with U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty held a news conference on Monday mornings and said the ability to purchase these weapons is a gift for terrorist groups.

All three U.S. lawmakers have pursued gun control legislation following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, that killed 20 students and six staff members, and they have met with President Barack Obama about executive actions to tighten the nation’s gun laws.

Blumenthal said the large scale attack that happened in the nightclub club is only possible because of the weapons are available for purchase.

"If there is a lesson for these murders and attacks, assault weapons are at the center of many of these attacks," Blumenthal said.

Murphy added that terrorists are no longer building bombs in basements. Instead, they are walking into gun stores to buy weapons to carry out attacks.

On Sunday, he said Congress “has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence” and said this “epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing – again.”

Esty, wearing a pin in remembrance of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, said this latest attack is an attack on humanity.

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