Senator Cory Booker on Gun Violence: It's Time to Close Legal Loopholes | Big Think

Senator Cory Booker on Gun Violence: It's Time to Close Legal Loopholes

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Long before New Jersey Senator Cory Booker was listed as a potential running mate and Vice President for Hillary Clinton, he was an advocate of common sense gun reform: closing loopholes in existing background check legislation, and preventing individuals on the federal terrorism watch list from acquiring automatic weapons. Sadly, in the aftermath of a mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando named Pulse, which left 49 dead and 53 wounded, the American Senate has failed to take action.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CORY BOOKER:

Cory Booker is the junior United States senator from New Jersey. He was born in Washington, D.C., and his parents, who both worked for IBM, later relocated the family to Harrington Park, New Jersey. A star high school athlete, Booker received a football scholarship to Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar before earning his law degree from Yale University. Booker won a special election to fill the term of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg to become New Jersey’s first African American senator and only the twenty-first person in American history to ascend directly from mayor to senator. Booker lives in Newark’s Central Ward. His book, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, gives an account of his own political education that have shaped his particular civic vision for America.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Cory Booker:  When it comes to gun safety in America we all have to agree whatever your view is that we have too much gun violence, that we are alone in humanity for the level of violence we have in our own communities. This is not a war zone but we have 90 people dying from gun violence virtually every day. With certain populations even more evident young African American men is the leading cause of death. We have a Virginia Tech every day in terms of just the number of people who succumb to murder and that type of related gun violence. And so I don’t care who you are as America. This is an unacceptable reality. And for us to have built a level of tolerance of this is to me disappointing is not even the right word. It is deeply frustrating and painful that we as a society would tolerate this.

Now that said there are obviously strong emotions where people believe in Second Amendment rights to own guns, where people who are sportsmen and women believe the need to own guns. And there are people out there who have guns because they fear for their lives and believe they should have a right to defend themselves. I am one of those people that believes that we can respect those three groups – people who are strident on the Second Amendment, people who believe that they need weapons to protect themselves and people especially people who are in it for the sport.

That we can do common sense gun safety things that can make us all safety including people who have guns. And I know that this is not a minority opinion that I have because when we poll gun owners the overall majority, 60 percent, 70 percent, sometimes 80 percent agree with common sense steps that we can take for gun safety. So there are loopholes that need to be closed that I think most people would agree. Right now we have a situation where if you abuse your spouse and have been charged, convicted of that you can’t buy a weapon. Well there’s a loophole that involves it it’s not your spouse but your boyfriend. We need to close that. Domestic violence happens too often in our country and there’s ways we know to protect that. And states have been more aggressive have seen violence against women using guns drop.

We have the data that shows it and this is a simple common sense thing that we need to do that again most Americans agree on. We should not have a country where you are suspected of terrorism and you can easily buy a gun. We should have common sense background checks. And if that background check takes longer than 24 hours so be it because the overruling majority have instant checks.

So because there’s such a realm of common sense things that don’t infringe those groups I mentioned earlier the question is why aren’t we doing them? And that’s something that I believe is reflective of all of us and our sense of urgency and demand is not what it needs to be to get congress to move. And we should understand that so much better is possible and I’m a big believ...

For the full transcript, check out