Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Monday that he and
his colleagues in Congress were "moved" by the stories of those affected by the mass shooting in Colorado last
Friday and paid tribute to those who saved the lives of others.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and McConnell observed a moment of
silence when the Senate
opened for legislative business on Monday
afternoon.
"All of us were moved over the weekend by the stories of the victims
themselves," McConnell said in his speech on the floor of the Senate.
He went on to refer to several stories he had read about men who saved
female companions and emergency responders who saved the life of an
unborn child.
He also referred to the shooter who killed a dozen people during a
movie showing as a "monster." The lone suspect, James Holmes, 24, whom investigators believe opened fire in a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colorado on Friday morning killing 12 and wounding over 50, is in police custody.
“In the life of a nation, some events are just so terrible that they
compel all of us to set aside our normal routines and preoccupations,
step back, reflect on our own motivations and priorities, and think
about the kind of lives we all aspire to live," he said. "And as is
almost always the case in moments like this, the horror has been
tempered somewhat by the acts of heroism and self-sacrifice that took
place in the midst of the violence."
McConnell quoted the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5 in his speech,
and included the line in a post on his Facebook page.
"There are few things more common in America than going out to a movie
with friends, which is why the first response most of us had to the
shootings in Aurora was to think: it could have been any of us," he
wrote on his Facebook page. "It’s the randomness of a crime like this
that makes it impossible to understand and so hard to accept. But as
Scripture says, 'the rain falls on the just and the unjust.' So we
accept that some things we just can’t explain. Evil is one of them.
And we take comfort in the fact that while tragedy and loss persist,
so does the goodness and generosity of so many."
