Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Monday ripped his fellow members of Congress for offering “thoughts and prayers” following the mass shooting at a Las Vegas country music festival.
“To my colleagues: your cowardice to act cannot be whitewashed by thoughts and prayers,” Murphy tweeted. “None of this ends unless we do something to stop it.”
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Earlier Monday, Murphy issued a blistering statement in which he called on Congress to “get off its ass and do something” about gun violence.
“This must stop. It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic,” Murphy said. “There are, and the thoughts and prayers of politicians are cruelly hollow if they are paired with continued legislative indifference.”
The senator has become a leading figure in the push for gun control following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, introducing a bill to expand background checks for gun sales following the 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
Murphy joined a host of other Democrats calling for stricter gun control legislation following the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
At least 58 people are dead and 500 others injured in the Las Vegas shooting, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.