Photo Credit: Eric Lee on behalf of Axios

WATCH: Senator Reverend Warnock joined Axios News Shapers event in Washington D.C.

In addition to discussing his priorities in the FAA reauthorization, Senator Reverend Warnock also chatted with Axios’ Alexi McCammond about next steps on gun safety, democracy legislation, and more

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) joined Alexi McCammond for an Axios Live News Shapers event to discuss his legislative priorities for Georgia, including bolstering the aviation workforce, strengthening gun safety laws, and continuing the fight to protect our democracy. The full conversation can be found HERE.

Key Excerpts from the Senator’s interview:

On FAA Reauthorization:

“As a voice for Georgia, and as a member of the Commerce committee, I’m looking forward to the work we’ll do on the FAA reauthorization mark up… I’m focused on increasing our workforce pipeline. There are challenges as we look at the future protectory of aviation: the need for pilots, the need for aviation mechanics, people up and down the supply chain. There are challenges but there are also opportunities.”

On protecting our democracy:

“We are in a challenging moment, but we’ve always had to fight for our democracy. This has always been an ongoing project. This grand and noble experiment of a government of and by and for the people. Women had to stand up to make true the promises of democracy so they could exercise their right to vote. African Americans and others have had to stand up and this is the work we have to continue to do.”

On gun safety legislation:

“[Gun safety] is an issue of why we have to work on our democracy, because we haven’t made the progress we should make on the issue of gun safety, not because solutions are so complicated and hard to find, but purely because of politics in the worst sense of the word. 87% of Americans according to a Fox News poll believe we ought to have universal background checks, and still we can’t seem to get the progress we need to make on this issue. And I think it’s because the people and their voices have been squeezed out of their democracy through partisan gerrymandering, through the influence of dark money in our politics, and somehow we’ve got to get the people’s voice back. So, listening my 6 year old daughter [the day of the Atlanta medical center shooting] was just a reminder of why I do this work, why I deal with the difficulty of being away from them so much, because all of us want to be able to drop our kids off at eight o’clock in the morning and have a reasonable reassurance that we’ll pick them up at three thirty. That’s not an issue of blue and red, that’s a human issue. That’s not a Democratic or Republican issue, and if we can get the gun safety issue out of the culture wars, and deal with it as a public safety issue like we deal with other public safety issues, I think we have a path and a chance to getting something done.”

Click HERE to watch the full conversation.

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