Warnock says ‘common-sense’ gun safety laws can pass if ‘the people’s voices are heard’

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said Sunday that “common-sense” gun safety reform laws can pass if “the people’s voices are heard.”

“There is a divide between what the American people want, Republicans and Democrats, and what they are able to get, increasingly, out of their government,” Warnock told MSNBC’s Al Sharpton on “PoliticsNation.” “And so we have to remain vigilant on the gun safety issue. But at root, it’s really a democracy problem.”

“And if the people’s voices are heard, I think Democrats, Republicans, and independents, and if we get the gun issue out of the culture wars and focused squarely on public safety, we can get common-sense gun safety laws passed,” he added.

Warnock said that the people’s voices have “been squeezed out of their own democracy” due to gerrymandering and “dark money” in politics. He pointed to a recent Fox News poll that said most of Americans support universal background checks and called for “common-sense” laws to be passed.

“Listen, we’ve had as many mass shootings this year as we’ve had days.  But you and I know, because of the work that we’ve done for decades, that, in a real sense, when you look at what happens in Black and brown and poor communities, we’ve been dealing with mass shootings every day for years, in fact,” he said.

“And I say to those who say, it’s not guns that kill people, people do, then shouldn’t you want to know who the people are?  Shouldn’t you want to at least pass background checks?” he added.

Warnock also recalled the day when his kids were in lockdown at school during a mass shooting in Atlanta, Ga. last month that left one woman dead and four women hospitalized.

“It was not a good feeling to — to know that I was standing on the floor of the United States Supreme Court, urging my colleagues to pass common-sense gun safety laws, while my own children, four and six years old, were on lockdown at a school because of an active shooting situation in Atlanta,” he said.