Washington, DC - 20 June 2016 // — SOUNDBITE (English) Senator Harry Reid, Democrat Minority Leader: “Senate Republicans should be embarrassed but of course they’re not. They’re not embarrassed because the NRA is happy. 90 percent of Americans support expanding background checks. It’s not 90 percent of Democrats, it’s 90 percent of the American people. Democrats, Republicans and Independents. And 85 percent of Americans want to close the terrorist gun loophole, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. But the NRA says no so Republicans do nothing.” // SOUNDBITE (English) Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat, California: “My own view, a very personal view is that we’re going into an election season. And Mr. and Mrs. America you have to stand up and you have to say I’m going to vote only for people who will do something to close the terror gap, to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally incompetent, who are criminals and would use them illegally, maybe just maybe this next election can produce something.” // SOUNDBITE (English) Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat, Connecticut “Terrorists today are using assault weapons, rather than IEDs or airplanes to attack Americans. After September 11, we decided we weren’t going to allow terrorists to get a hold of airplanes in order to kill civilians. Well today they’ve moved on to assault weapons. They specifically recruit lone wolf attackers to go to gun shows to buy assault weapons and we should take the same tact. So we’re not giving up. The American people aren’t giving up. We’ll watch how these negotiations play out over the next few days but I will tell you this: they are simply evidence of the fact that Republicans know that they are on the wrong side of the electorate. Democracy doesn’t allow for this place to be this far out of step with 90 percent of Americans for very long.” // SOUNDBITE (English) Senator Cory Booker, Democrat, New Jersey: “And so for all those folks who say time and time again we’re at war with terror, what we have been doing by not closing this loophole is to aid and abet those people who seek to get weapons to kill us. So I will not stop fighting. I will stand with my colleagues here and we will continue this effort and it’s our hope that folks will start lifting their voice, that we won’t wait until the next mass shooting that seems to happen every two months, there is enough blood, there is enough death, enough killing going on, we have all the evidence we need that we need to do more. Doing nothing is unacceptable.”