Frank Lautenberg

Frank Lautenberg in 2011

Frank Raleigh Lautenberg (born January 23, 1924 – 3 June 2013) was a businessman and American Democratic Party politician who served as United States Senator from New Jersey from 1982 to 2001, and again from 2003 until his death in 2013.

Quotes

• The ocean is tired. It's throwing back at us what we're throwing in there.
  • USA Today, August 11, 1988.

• "We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others," he said. "When it was their turn to serve where were they? AWOL, that's where they were...the lead chickenhawk against Sen. Kerry [is] the vice president of the United States, Vice President Cheney.
  • On the floor of the Senate, April 28, 2004[1]

• The sickening shooting spree in Tucson holds many lessons for our country, but the most important is this: It's much too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on deadly weapons.
  We must change this.
  A good start is by banning high-capacity gun magazines -- which allow scores of bullets to be loaded at one time -- such as the one used in the Tucson massacre that left six people dead and 14 others wounded, including my colleague, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
  According to news reports, Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged shooter in Tucson, used a 33-round magazine in a murderous rampage. The sheriff says 31 spent rounds were found on the scene.
  As we now know, a group of heroic bystanders stopped the shooter by wrestling him to the ground. But they didn't have an opportunity to intervene until he emptied the magazine and paused to reload.
  If the shooter didn't have access to the high-capacity magazine that he used, he would have stopped to reload sooner and lives might have been saved.
  Loughner's magazine was attached to a 9 mm Glock 19 semi-automatic handgun, which is the preferred weapon of deranged madmen. In 2007, Seung-Hui Cho used the same model in the Virginia Tech shooting spree, which claimed 32 lives.
  • Lautenberg, Frank (January 12, 2011). "Ban high-capacity gun magazines like one used in Tucson". CNN.