A House Democrat says he will boycott a congressional moment of silence for the Orlando shooting victims, and says these moments of silence have become a symbol of inaction on gun violence.
“Silence. That is how the leadership of the most powerful country in the world will respond to this week’s massacre of its citizens,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., during Monday’s House session.
Rep. Himes said innocent lives were “cut short by a madman with military rifle. And make no mistake, cut short by this Congress’s fetish to repeatedly meet bloody tragedy with silence.”
But he said he won’t participate in these moments on the House floor any longer.
“Not me, not anymore,” he said. “I will no longer stand here absorbing the faux concern, contrived gravity, and tepid smugness of a House complicit in the weekly bloodshed,” he added, before warning that the American people will eventually “hold us accountable for our inaction.”
An elder of his Presbyterian church, Himes ended his speech by telling each of his fellow representatives, “as you bow your head to pray for your God, and think of what to say to your God, when you are asked what you did to help slow the slaughter of innocents, there will be silence.”
House lawmakers were expected to pause for a moment of silence Monday evening to mark the shooting.
