Kelly Ripa gave a moving speech about gun violence Thursday morning on Live with Kelly and Ryan, a day after the mass shooting at a South Florida high school that claimed the lives of at least 17 people.
"[I] don't know how how many times this is going to happen," Ripa began. "I don’t know how many times it has to happen for a school shooting, a mass shooting of this caliber, before somebody does something, before people really get into it.”
Ripa squelched potential complaints that a talk show host should avoid delving into a sensitive issue like gun violence, saying, "In this moment, I am a mom of three kids that go to school and I had to talk my kids off a ledge this morning because they were afraid to go to school.”
"I said to my kids, follow the instructions of the school, you have these drills in place," Ripa continued. "Unfortunately, my kids have grown up having these drills in place — they don't just have fire drills anymore, they have active shooter drills which is so tragic to me."
"The fact that our country has such unparalleled mass shooter violence is staggering to me," Ripa said, before hammering her main point: "So somebody needs to have a conversation that is larger than in this moment, and again, I just say it as a concerned citizen and parent and human being that something needs to change, there needs to be a bigger, better dialogue because we are failing in this area."
Ripa went on to say that "offering thoughts and prayers are not enough anymore."
Kelly Ripa on the recent Florida school shooting: “And people are gonna say, ‘Oh, you’re a talk show host, shut up… https://t.co/PisTliu8RF
"I can't imagine the horror of the parents of that school," Ripa said. "Or any school when this happens, or any place where this happens."
"There needs to be a bigger, better dialogue because we are failing in this area."
Ripa circled back to the conversation she had this morning with her children, saying, "You don't want to mislead your kids and say this is never going to happen, you hope and pray it doesn't happen, but when they are inundated with these images every day, day after day, all the time, you start to feel like a liar, and I don't like feeling that way."
Ripa ended her commentary by saying, "We are thinking about the people in Florida today and all of those parents and teachers."