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(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called for an end to “hateful incendiary comments,” adding that his 10-year-old niece asked him whether she would be put in a cage.



Speaking at the National Press Club, the congressman also called for those in the highest levels of government to “stop invoking fear, using racist language and encouraging reprehensible behavior.”





“We must also stop the hateful incendiary comments. We gotta do it. Those in highest levels of the government must stop invoking fear, using racist language and encouraging reprehensible behavior. It only creates more division among us and severely limits our ability to work together for the common good,” Cummings said.



“As a country, we finally must say that enough is enough, that we are done with the hateful rhetoric, that we are done with the mass shootings, that we are done with the white supremacist domestic terrorists, who are terrorizing our country and fighting against everything America stands for and everything our phenomenal military has fought for,” he said.



“And when I’m speaking of that, I’m just reminded of a conversation that I had with my 10-year-old niece this weekend. She said ‘Uncle Elijah’ – 10 years old now – ‘Uncle Elijah, are they going to put us in cages?’ Are they going to put us in cages? That’s coming from a 10-year-old. We’re better than that. We must stand together with those who we do not look like, with those who we disagree with, and recognize that we have more in common than we have that separates us,” Cummings said.



“We all are sick of this. We all want decency and respect – decency and respect. We want our communities to be protected, and we want all to live in a country where our children are safe when they go to the mall or to the Wal-Mart or to the local school. We must stand united and demand change,” he said.



Cummings called Senate Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to take up a background checks bill that the congressman co-sponsored and for President Donald Trump to sign it.



He said gun violence knows no bounds and that the only thing that changed is the location of the shootings.



“Gun violence seems to know no bounds, none, none – a school, a shopping mall, a movie theater, a park, a church. Sadly, the only things that have changed is location. That’s the only thing,” he said.