Following the deadly shooting Sunday in Texas, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) issued a lengthy statement calling on Congress to enact gun control legislation.
Murphy, one of the most vocal gun control advocates in Congress, tore into Republican lawmakers who vote in favor of gun lobbyists.
“The paralysis you feel right now – the impotent helplessness that washes over you as news of another mass slaughter scrolls across the television screen – isn’t real. It’s a fiction created and methodically cultivated by the gun lobby, designed to assure that no laws are passed to make America safer, because those laws would cut into their profits,” he said in a statement.
“My heart sunk to the pit of my stomach, once again, when I heard of today’s shooting in Texas,” Murphy continued. “My heart dropped further when I thought about the growing macabre club of families in Las Vegas and Orlando and Charleston and Newtown, who have to relive their own day of horror every time another mass killing occurs.”
He wrote that mass shootings are not “inevitable” and that the mass carnage from guns is unique to the United States.
“As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets,” he said in the statement. “Ask yourself – how can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents.”
Read the full statement from Murphy:
The paralysis you feel right now – the impotent helplessness that washes over you as news of another mass slaughter scrolls across the television screen – isn’t real. It’s a fiction created and methodically cultivated by the gun lobby, designed to assure that no laws are passed to make America safer, because those laws would cut into their profits. My heart sunk to the pit of my stomach, once again, when I heard of today’s shooting in Texas. My heart dropped further when I thought about the growing macabre club of families in Las Vegas and Orlando and Charleston and Newtown, who have to relive their own day of horror every time another mass killing occurs.
None of this is inevitable. I know this because no other country endures this pace of mass carnage like America. It is uniquely and tragically American. As long as our nation chooses to flood the county with dangerous weapons and consciously let those weapons fall into the hands of dangerous people, these killings will not abate.
As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets. Ask yourself – how can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents.
My heart breaks for Sutherland Springs. Just like it still does for Las Vegas. And Orlando. And Charleston. And Aurora. And Blacksburg. And Newtown. Just like it does every night for Chicago. And New Orleans. And Baltimore. And Bridgeport. The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic. The time is now for Congress to shed its cowardly cover and do something.
Nothing’s going to change.
Bravo Senator Murphy. Now is the time to speak - as it IS out of respect and grief for those whose lives were taken yesterday, and in each of the other deadly assaults to which you refer, and out of respect for the grieving families, friends, communities and country.
Trump says this is a mental health issue. Perhaps he could at least treat it like the opioid crisis and declare mass shootings a public health emergency. Then it could be attacked with a massive advertising campaign: “Just say no to Mass Murder.” Like the opioid crisis, hardly adequate but possibly better than nothing since nothing is what we are going to get anyway.
He can task Jared Kushner to “look into it”.
Amen, Senator Murphy. Amen.