McBath in victory speech vows to keep fighting for gun control

But her face turned somber as she delivered the victory speech she revamped that evening after a deadly mass shooting that left at least 19 elementary school students dead in Texas.

“I came to give one speech, but I am now forced to make another because just hours ago, we paid for the weapons of war on our streets again with the blood of little children sitting in our schools,” she told the crowd. “We paid for unfettered gun access with phone calls to mothers and fathers who have gasped for air when their desperation would not let them breathe. Who have sunk to their knees when their agony just would not let them stand. It was a phone call that every parent fears.”

McBath, who lost her teenage son to murder and decided to run for Congress after a mass shooting at a Florida high school, said her victory Tuesday was not the culmination of her work but the beginning of a new challenge.

“So tonight, I stand in front of you as Lucy McBath, a daughter of the civil rights movement, a woman who survived breast cancer twice, and a mother who lost her son to gun violence,” she said. “I am reminded that the true strength of this nation does not lie in the measure of our riches or the magnitude of our wealth, but in the strength of our character and the bonds of our brotherhood and in the sheer future that we must create together.”