CNN’s Chris Cuomo had a blunt message on Thursday for those who offer “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting without taking action to solve the problem of gun violence.
“You mock those who lost loved ones because if you gave it any thought at all you would never walk away from any of these without figuring out a better way to deal with them,” Cuomo said, adding:
“And prayer? You think leaving it to God is the answer? We pray for strength, we pray for wisdom, for resolve, but we clearly don’t want to act on any of those here, so what are you praying for?”
Cuomo’s comments came one day after a gunman killed 12 people at a California bar.
“It was the worst mass shooting in a week,” he said. “Think about that: Twelve lives, stolen by a thief that visits us weekly. This is our new normal.”
But Cuomo didn’t just place the blame on politicians. He noted that while Americans agreed on the need for better gun control laws, they didn’t vote based on the issue. In a CNN exit poll this week, just 10 percent of voters named it as the most important issue, behind health care, immigration and the economy.
“No one even really ran on it,” Cuomo said. “And if you won’t vote on it, if it’s not your priority, if you can’t own that part of it, how can you convince anyone in power to care about it? You can’t.”
Cuomo said there was just one question everyone has to answer: Can we do better than this?
“We can do better. And we all have to live with doing nothing,” he said. “The next time is coming. And more and more, you, me, our leaders, we’re all becoming part of the problem. Think and pray on that.”
See his full monologue in the clip above.
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