Texas shooting: Powerful moment lawmaker gets emotional on Senate floor over school massacre

A Democratic Senator has gone viral following his powerful and emotional speech to Congress in the wake of the Texas elementary school shooting. On Tuesday morning, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos went into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with a rifle. He opened fire on classrooms and killed 19 children and two teachers, before he was killed by police. He is also suspected of shooting his grandmother before the rampage. There are fears the death toll could yet grow. The horrific massacre has sparked more pleas and demands for tighter gun control laws in the US. For Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, the tragedy is particularly significant. Murphy has demanded legislative action on gun laws for years, and his home state of Connecticut is where one of the most infamous school shootings took place at Sandy Hook Elementary, where 20 young people were killed in 2012. [caption id="attachment_338097" align="alignnone" width="878"] Senator Murphy said he spoke to the floor to 'literally get down on my hands and knees and beg' for his colleagues to work with him[/caption] Hours after the news of the Texas shooting broke, he returned to the Senate floor to plead with his colleagues to take action. He began by repeatedly asking: “What are we doing? What are we doing? "Just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands." Visibly emotional, he continued: "Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, getting to this position of authority if your answer, as this slaughter increases, as ours kids run for their lives, we do nothing? "Why are you here if not to solve a problem as existential as this? "This isn’t inevitable. These kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else.