A gun-control opponent pushed back on claims she doesn't care about mass shootings victims, telling Congress 'this didn't get easier for us'

• A gun-control opponent told Congress on Wednesday that mass shootings don't "get easier for us."
• "Everybody with a soul has it shattered over acts like this," testified Amy Swearer, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

A gun-control opponent said in testimony to members of Congress on Wednesday that mass shootings don't "get easier for us" as she argued against stricter gun laws in the US.

Amy Swearer — a legal fellow at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation — called the recent deadly massacres in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York "horrific" during the House Oversight and Reform Committee's hearing on America's gun violence epidemic.

"No one should ever have to experience that type of unfathomable trauma and I cannot even begin to imagine what those families are going through right now," an emotional Swearer testified.

"Everybody with a soul has it shattered over acts like this and we have seen it shattered every single time from Columbine to Parkland to Uvalde," Swearer said, referring to past mass shootings.

But she took issue with those who say conservatives who don't want to ban assault weapons or enact stricter gun control are heartless, decrying what she described as "mocking."

"We did not somehow — this didn't get easier for us," she said.

"We did not grow numb somewhere along the way to the reality of this," she said, explaining, "We oppose these policies precisely because the lives of these victims matters, because the grief of their loved ones is real, because we all want thriving communities where families are flourishing instead of buying their children."

During her testimony, Swearer ripped calls for tighter gun laws as "largely targeting peaceable, law-abiding citizens."

She suggested that instead of limiting gun rights, Congress should let schools "shift the over $100 billion in unused COVID relief funds to physical security improvements" and hire armed staffers to shoot gunmen.

"Many of you are the ones implying that a lot of victims would be alive today but for a mass shooter's pistol grip and a background check that he already passed," Swearer said to members of Congress, adding, "Many of you are the same ones mocking anybody for, quote, 'talking about doors,' when a single locked door in Uvalde would likely have saved 21 lives."

Swearer testified during the hearing after emotional and harrowing testimony given by parents of children slain in Uvalde's May 24 Robb Elementary School massacre and an 11-year-old survivor of the rampage, as well as those impacted by the Buffalo mass shooting.