LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Hundreds filled the area outside the Muhammad Ali Center in downtown Louisville Thursday evening calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring gun reform legislation to the Senate floor.
"To you Senator McConnell, I just want you to know I was shot in a prayer group, so what's your plan B?" Hollan Holm, a survivor of the Heath High School shooting.
"We are fed up. We don't want anymore speeches. We want action," Rep. Tim Ryan, D.-Ohio, said. "We want to change the United States of America."
The rally was the culmination of Ryan's Caravan for Change, which made several stops throughout Ohio calling for gun reform in light of the deadly shootings in Dayton and El Paso last weekend. Ryan said he chose to end the tour in Louisville because he wanted to come to McConnell's home to call on him to take action in light of the shootings.
"They bring us to a state of outrage that this continues to happen in the most powerful country in the world," he said.
While many were horrified and heartbroken by the images out of Dayton and El Paso, for those who have lost their loved ones to gun violence, it is a different story.
Dean Walker lost his daughter Savannah when a gunman shot and killed her at a Portland neighborhood art gallery concert in March 2017. Just months later, his son Nathaniel was able to get a gun and shot and killed himself.
"I can't sit at home," he said. "I lost a daughter, I lost a son to gun violence."
The crowd called for, among other pieces of gun reform, red flag laws that would be able to keep guns out of the hands of people believed to be a threat to harm themselves or others and background checks for gun sales.
"I want us to have Mitch McConnell to pass these two bills sitting on his desk right now," Ryan said.
"I believe to this day, if red flag laws would have been in effect, my son would be alive today," Walker said. "If we had background checks, there might have been a possibility my daughter would be alive because guns may not have made it to that venue that night."
In his first interview since coming home for the recess, McConnell told Terry Meiners on WHAS Radio that he has asked his committee chairs to begin bipartisan discussions on legislation.
"I want to make a law, not just see this political sparring going on endlessly, which never produces a result," he said.
But Walker and others said if McConnell and other leaders don't act, the people will at the ballot box.
"If you don't get on board with making it safer in this country, we'll get you out of office," he said. "Change gun laws or change Congress."
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