The Brooklyn lawmaker told News Americas exclusively that she is now looking forward to the day members of the 113th Congress will put aside their differences and move to tighten lax gun laws.
The comments from the daughter of Jamaican immigrants come as the tragedy’s impact was felt in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Six-year-old Ana Grace Marquez-Greene’s mother has roots in Puerto Rico along with Victoria Soto, the teacher who died protecting her students.
Ana Grace, her 9-year-old and her parents, only moved to the United States from Canada two months ago and enrolled her at Sandy Hook Elementary School because of its good reputation, the girl’s grandmother, Puerto Rican Elba Marquez, told The Associated Press.
Soto’s dad was born in Puerto Rico.
In Puerto Rico, Gov. Luis Fortuño declared four days of mourning.
Congresswoman Clarke says “there are too many families, in every part of this nation, that have been victims of gun violence.”
“It is imperative that we put aside our differences in the 113th Congress to pass legislation that will increase accountability among gun vendors and owners, support local law enforcement to stem the tide of gun trafficking across our nation, reduce the number of illegal guns on our streets, and remove access to high-powered militarized weapons which have no place in our communities,” Representative Clarke told NAN.
Her comments come as families of the 20 children slaughtered by gunman Adam Lanza on Dec. 15th, began laying to rest their dead even as U.S. President, Barack Obama, now insists Vice President Biden will head an “interagency group” to handle gun control policies.
According to the Washington Post, “White House officials say the eventual package of proposals will likely include some new restrictions on guns, particularly assault rifles, and high-capacity magazines. But they say it will also likely involve measures that touch on mental health initiatives and, perhaps, a discussion on the depiction of violence presented in popular culture.”
This comes as a new CBS poll has found that 57 percent of Americans now say gun control laws should be made stricter and editorials from newspapers around the world urged that the time is now for tougher gun laws.
The powerful gun-industry lobby, the National Rifle Association, also broke its silence on Tuesday for the first time since the shootings, saying it was “shocked, saddened and heartbroken” and was “prepared to offer meaningful contributions” to prevent such massacres.
The NRA’s Facebook page has been deactivated, and visitors are redirected to a bare-bones page where comments are disabled. As of Tuesday morning Its Twitter account, which typically posts several times a day, now simply links to a news item that says “The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again” and “is planning to hold a major news conference in the Washington, DC area on Friday, December 21.”
