In the final push toward the Senate gun control vote on April 17, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) admitted Democrats were flying Newtown families into DC to break a Republican filibuster--he also admitted that those families did not know they were going to be used for that purpose until the plane carrying them was already in the air.
The families thought they were coming to DC to oppose "high capacity" magazines. But according to The New York Times, once the families were in the air aboard Air Force One, Murphy let them know they would used "to get a vote on a vote."
Here's how Murphy put it:
They thought they were coming down here to argue for a ban on high capacity magazines and universal background checks, and we told them they coming to argue to avert a filibuster and allow us to debate. And that was really heartbreaking and deflating for some of them. But they rose to the occasion, and it was wonderful to see them at the end of the trip feeling like they had made a difference.
It's saddening to learn that they allowed themselves to be used like this. I don't understand it.
I don't know that I would want the world to think that the sum total of my child's prematurely shortened life meant only one thing... gun control.
I would want to come away with a bigger message, something that spoke to the life of my child, not their death.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here." - Barack Obama, June 7, 2013
Quote: Justme wrote in post #3They were held hostage
Ain't we all?
Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)