I've pretty much always used my positions as a bully pulpit. What that means is strongly advocating for the things I feel are really important. Gun violence, to me, is the highest-priority public-health issue, and I have to make sure Congress is aware of it, the American people are aware of it, the president is aware of it, and that we all begin together to develop policies to exterminate the disease - the epidemic, really - of gun violence.

Health is more than absence of disease; it is about economics, education, environment, empowerment, and community. The health and well being of the people is critically dependent upon the health system that serves them. It must provide the best possible health with the least disparities and respond equally well to everyone.

You can't keep an ignorant population healthy.

But I'm saying we are loosing the people who are going to pay my social security. And that bothers me.

It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school.

Guns are far too accessible and too readily available. There are over 200 million guns in our society - and that's just the legal ones, the ones we know about. Every ten seconds, another gun is produced. And every fourteen minutes, some person in America dies from gun-inflicted action.

If I could be the "condom queen" and get every young person who engaged in sex to use a condom in the United States, I would weara crown on my head with a condom on it! I would!