Jimmy Kimmel Shares Emotional Reaction To Uvalde Shooting
“Our cowardly leaders just aren’t listening to us.”
In a scathing opening statement for Wednesday’s airing of Jimmy Kimmel Live, host Jimmy Kimmel expressed his emotional reaction and opinion on this week’s elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. In an almost ten-minute segment, Kimmel breaks down in tears as he laments that yet again, the United States is witnessing the unconscionable loss of lives — this time 19 children and two teachers.
He admits that “Our leaders on the right, Americans, Congress, and at Fox News, and these other outlets warn us not to politicize this. They criticize our president for even speaking about doing something to stop it because they don’t want to speak about it, because they know what they’ve done, and they know what they haven’t done, and they know that it’s indefensible, and they’d rather sweep this under the rug.”
Kimmel continues by sharing that most Americans have more common ground when it comes to gun laws than some would think, saying that “eighty-nine percent of Americans want background checks before a gun can be purchased, which is just the very least we can do.”
He reveals that a bipartisan bill has already been passed by the House of Representatives and awaits a decision on behalf of the Senate, and states “It’s been stalled for over a year now, and they won’t pass it, because our cowardly leaders just aren’t listening to us, they’re listening to the NRA, they’re listening to those people who write them checks, who keep them in power because that’s the way politics work.”
The bill referenced would enact a new gun legislation that would expand background checks for all commercial gun sales. It was passed by the House with two separate votes in March 2021.
The late-night television host goes on to proclaim that it’s clear things are not in order when an NBA coach “shows more leadership and passion than almost every Republican in Congress.”
Kimmel also addresses politicians like Ted Cruz and Texan Governor Greg Abbott directly, expressing his hope that they will actually consider these points, instead of quickly transitioning to conversations that oppose gun control laws.
He states, “If your solution to children being massacred is armed guards, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on. There was an armed guard in Buffalo. There was an armed guard in Parkland. There was an armed guard in Uvalde.”
He fervently listed countries that have shown success after implementing effective gun control laws, sharing examples in Scotland, and Australia, and declared, “This is the only country that this keeps happening.”
“Firearms are now the number one cause of death in American children and teens,” He shares.
In a call to action directed at the state level Texan administration, he says “It’s OK to admit you made a mistake. In fact, it’s not just OK, it’s necessary to admit you made a mistake when your mistake is killing the children in your state. It takes a big person to do something like that. It takes a brave person to do something like that.”
Before featuring a news compilation of the shooting, he turned to his audience in a plea asking them to not forget what has happened and to urge them to press administrative officials to do something about it.
The only silver lining of atrocious happenings such as the one in Uvalde is that it can create unity and resolve, and with people like Jimmy Kimmel advocating for the safety of our children, there’s a hope that the change the needs craves will soon come.
