Guerrero: Wake up, Democrats. Don’t let Republicans own the issue of violent crime.
Sen. John Morse: I think we’re in an issue here where the debate has been largely between liberals and conservatives. I have been very encouraged by the polls on the issue of violent crime and I think that we have a lot of work to do as we go forward. So I think it’s important, as I said, for us, the debate has been largely between liberals and conservatives. The public views crime broadly. There’s been, and there remains, a debate about, you know, in my view, the impact of gun violence and the extent to which it has an impact on — on our economy.
But now we have entered a new phase, and that is the question, as I say, of violence against women, which we have been having for some time. And we should really be talking about the nature of violence against women across the board. And so what we see now is a combination of new data — that is, crime data. We saw that on the 10th of September, we saw 2.3 million new violent crimes in the United States, and that is a new all-time high. As a consequence, we have another 3-year low in terms of crime and violence, and that is what the public, as I say, as a whole, is taking to be a result of the actions taken by the government. That’s a change, and now we have to start rethinking the way in which we look at violence against women.
We have to recognize that it’s not just a question of gun violence — guns don’t kill people, people do. More and more, we are going to see women killing other women, and that’s what has made the issue so significant. So we have to start talking about violence against women in a broader way, and not just in the context of gun violence. That’s the other change that is going to have to occur in order for us to move forward.
I don’t want to minimize the issue of gun violence. We have to keep talking about it — that’s what the debate is about. But as I say, we have to go beyond that in terms of how we view violence against women in our society, and we have to recognize that violence against women is a part of the discussion. Violence against women is
