“An­oth­er mass shoot­ing, an­oth­er mo­ment of si­lence,” Rep. Robin Kelly said Tues­day. “I haven’t stood [for a mo­ment of si­lence] for a year. … I can’t stand any­more. Some people may feel that’s dis­respect­ful, but I feel it’s re­spect­ful to the vic­tims and to their fam­il­ies. When is this gonna end? When are we gonna do more than stand? When are we go­ing start tak­ing ac­tion?”

Kelly’s mes­sage echoes what Demo­crats have been say­ing in re­cent weeks, though few oth­ers have joined her seated protests. “ A mo­ment of si­lence is not ac­tion,” said Demo­crat­ic Caucus chair Xavi­er Be­cerra. “If the only thing Con­gress is go­ing to do is hold mo­ments of si­lence every time someone is tra­gic­ally gunned down … we must act.”

Minor­ity Lead­er Nancy Pelosi had a sim­il­ar mes­sage Tues­day. “We have mo­ments of si­lence on the floor over and over again on the oc­ca­sion of high-pro­file at­tacks on our people, but we can­not re­main si­lent,” she said. “For us to hon­or the re­spons­ib­il­it­ies that we have to pro­tect and de­fend the Amer­ic­an people—we must not only have mo­ments of si­lence, we must have days of ac­tion.”