As a mother, a grandmother, a fellow human being, my heart is bursting for them. For thesevictims and their families. For a wounded community and a wounded church. For our countrystruggling once again to make sense of violence that is fundamentally senseless, and historywe desperately want to leave behind.
Yesterday was Juneteenth, a day of liberation and deliverance. One-hundred and fifty years ago,as news of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation spread from town to town across theSouth, free men and women lifted their voices in song and prayer.
Congregations long forced to worship underground, like the first Christians, joyfullyresurrected their churches.
In Charleston, the African Methodist Episcopal Church took a new name: Emanuel. "God is withus."
Faith has always seen this community through, and I know it will again.
Just as earlier generations threw off the chains of slavery and then segregation and Jim Crow,this generation will not be shackled by fear and hate.
On Friday, one by one, grieving parents and siblings stood up in court and looked at that youngman, who had taken so much from them, and said: "I forgive you."
In its way, their act of mercy was more stunning than his act of cruelty.
It reminded me of watching Nelson Mandela embrace his former jailers because, he said, hedidn't want to be imprisoned twice, once by steel and concrete, once by anger and bitterness.
In these moments of tragedy, many of us struggle with how to process the rush of emotions.
I'd been in Charleston that day. I'd gone to a technical school, Trident Tech. I had seen thejoy, the confidence and optimism of young people who were now serving apprenticeships withlocal businesses, Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, every background. I listened to their stories, Ishook their hands, I saw the hope and the pride.
And then by the time I got to Las Vegas, I read the news.
Like many of you, I was so overcome: How to turn grief, confusion into purpose and action?But that's what we have to do.
For me and many others, one immediate response was to ask how it could be possible that weas a nation still allow guns to fall into the hands of people whose hearts are filled with hate.
You can't watch massacre after massacre and not come to the conclusion that, as PresidentObama said, we must tackle this challenge with urgency and conviction.
Now, I lived in Arkansas and I represented Upstate New York. I know that gun ownership ispart of the fabric of a lot of law-abiding communities.
But I also know that we can have commonsense gun reforms that keep weapons out of thehands of criminals and the violently unstable, while respecting responsible gun owners.
What I hope with all of my heart is that we work together to make this debate less polarized,less inflamed by ideology, more informed by evidence, so we can sit down across the table,across the aisle from one another, and find ways to keep our communities safe while protectingconstitutional rights.
It makes no sense that bipartisan legislation to require universal background checks wouldfail in Congress, despite overwhelming public support.
It makes no sense that we wouldn't come together to keep guns out of the hands of domesticabusers, or people suffering from mental illnesses, even people on the terrorist watch list. Thatdoesn't make sense, and it is a rebuke to this nation we love and care about.
The President is right: The politics on this issue have been poisoned. But we can't give up. Thestakes are too high. The costs are too dear.