Nancy Pelosi: 'We must break the grip of the gun lobby on Congress'

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last updated 29 July 2016

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi vowed to fight to restore Democratic majorities in the Senate and House during her speech Thursday at the Democratic National Convention.

Pelosi praised the party for looking "like the 21st century," compared to the "restricted club that met in convention in Cleveland last week." She said their mission is much different than the Republican Party's — "we come to public service and to this convention not to trumpet darkness, but to fight a way forward for our country, a bright light forward." Pelosi laid out the Democratic agenda, saying the plan is to fight terror "at home and abroad" and eliminate the Islamic State by being "strong and smart, not reckless and rash."

She also demanded "courage, not cowardice, in the face of the National Rifle Association. For the sake of the 91 Americans killed by gun violence each day, we must break the grip of the gun lobby on Congress and keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists. If you're on the no fly list, you belong on the no buy list." The Democrats will work to overturn Citizens United, Pelosi continued, remove barriers to voting, invest in education, and create new jobs with living wages because "every family should be able to buy a home, send their children to college, retire with dignity, and never have to worry that their Social Security will be privatized or Medicare's guarantee will be taken away."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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