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Nine Dead After Church Shooting In Charleston

Source: Joe Raedle / Getty

Relatives and friends of the victims of last month’s shooting in a Charleston, South Carolina church traveled to Washington on Wednesday to demand that U.S. lawmakers vote on legislation to expand background checks on gun sales.

But their chances of success are at best considered slim. Similar legislation failed a Senate vote two years ago after 20 children were shot to death in the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut.

“I’m here today to speak up on behalf of the Charleston community and all who are sick and tired of Congress ignoring the problem of gun violence,” said Andre Duncan, whose aunt Myra Thompson was slain in the Charleston church on June 17.

Duncan urged Congress to close loopholes in the so-called Brady law, which requires licensed firearms sellers to check whether a buyer is prohibited from owning a gun because of a criminal history.

The Brady law, passed in 1993, was named after named after President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who was shot and wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt on the president.

“I will not rest until our legislators do what’s right by expanding Brady background checks at gun shows and online sales. This will save lives,” Duncan declared in the visitors’ center of the U.S. Capitol, standing alongside friends and family of the Charleston victims and of other casualties of gun violence.

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source: BCNN1.com

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