Nevada's Democratic US Senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, is calling on Congress to take up gun control in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting.
On a rare occasion, both of Nevada's US Senators made back-to-back speeches on the Senate floor yesterday, to honor the victims of this month's horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and hundreds more wounded.
Republican Senator Dean Heller told his fellow lawmakers Las Vegas has been able to come together to form a tighter community.
"Let me say this for the world to hear, our great city will not cower in fear because of this horrible act. We will mourn. We will heal. We will comfort each other. We will pray. Make no mistakes about it, Las Vegas is open for business. Las Vegas will not simply go on, but we will thrive."
Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto reiterated her colleague's remarks, yet the freshman Senator used her time at the podium to call on Congress to revisit the issue of gun control.
In a 20 minute address, Cortez Masto told her fellow lawmakers that what happened in Vegas did not have to happen again, if they act and pass what she calls common sense restrictions on automatic weapons.
"The right to own a gun must be balanced by the right of every American to be able to go out in public without fearing they'll be shot and killed at a church, or in a movie theater, or in a classroom, or in a nightclub, on a baseball field or at a concert."
Opponents of stricter gun control laws, however, have continually argued that gun control laws only place restrictions on law-abiding citizens, not criminals.
