Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees: Interview With Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)
Interview
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Well, listen, obviously, in Connecticut, 10 years later, we are still reeling from the massacre in Sandy Hook Elementary School. There is something uniquely cataclysmic when you lose a child, when you lose a family member, but it is also important to remember that all the kids in that school, all the adults in that school are never ever going to be the same. The entire community is going to experience trauma that's going to stay with them for a very, very long time.
And so, you know, I've stayed very close to the victims in Connecticut, but I'm frankly, equally as close to the victims of everyday gun violence -- the suicides, the homicides, the accidental shootings. It also doesn't hurt any less if your child dies on the streets of Hartford or New Orleans or Baltimore than it does if your child dies in a mass shooting at a school.
So it's important for us all to remember that this is happening every single day and every single night in America.
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Well, I mean, first, let me just, you know, bring up the poll that Harry referenced, I have a great deal of respect for Harry. But that poll, which sort of gets thrown out there all the time, it just infuriates me, because it's asking people a question that doesn't actually exist. The question in that Pew poll is, do you think you should protect people from gun violence? Or do you think we should respect the rights of gun owners?
In fact, you can do both at the same time. And so I'm never sure how relevant the answer to that poll is, other than Republicans increasingly think that as Republicans, they are supposed to answer one way and Democrats increasingly think as Democrats, they're supposed to answer the other way.
The reality is, most Americans think you should do both. You should respect the Second Amendment. You shouldn't take guns away from law- abiding citizens, but you should make sure that criminals and people who are seriously mentally ill don't get their hands on guns and that we should take these military style assault weapons off the streets.
I think we can still continue to work to find common ground. Obviously, we made a breakthrough last year. The bill we passed, the bipartisan Safer Communities Act is the first significant anti-gun violence legislation in 30 years.
I understand that was a difficult vote for some Republicans, the first time that they ever crossed the NRA, but I think they've seen that the sky hasn't fallen. And I take John at his word that he's continuing to show interest in finding common ground where we can find it, and maybe we'll be able to get there and build on the success of last year's bill.
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Yes, I think it's hard for me to, you know, negotiate with my Republican colleagues on live TV. We will work hard to try to find it.
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I think, everybody -- yes, I think everybody needs to remember that you know, right before Uvalde, people would have put the chances of a gun bill passed in Congress in 2022 at about zero to five percent. And then we worked hard at trying to figure out what our common denominator was.
I think we can build on that. I do think folks in this country are just furious about the way in which these AR-15s continue to be used in these mass shootings. I'm not saying that we have the votes in the House and the Senate right now to ban assault weapons, but I do think there are some things that could get bipartisan support, like shouldn't you have some training on one of these weapons, before you're able to pick it up and bring it out into public?
I mean, we require you to get training to drive a boat, to drive a car, but not to have a military style weapon that can kill a hundred people in five minutes? I think you could find bipartisan support for something like that. And we'll work hard this year to try to find that common ground.
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Well, and think of all of the kids who live today in neighborhoods that are violent every single day. I live you know, in the south end of Hartford, a neighborhood that has high rates of gun violence. I visited the local K through eight school in my neighborhood just a few months ago. And, you know, I talked to some of the kids there. Sixth and seventh graders, all they wanted to talk to me about was their walk to and from school every single day. They fear for their lives, just by walking to school and walking home at the end of the day.
Frankly, for them, school is the safe place. It's outside the school where they fear for their lives.
I just -- I know that our cause is righteous. I know that eventually, we're going to pass legislation that funds anti-gun violence programming in every neighborhood. I know we're going to take these dangerous weapons off the streets. I know we're going to have universal background checks.
I hate that kids and parents and families have to join this movement in order to make that happen, but the anti-gun violence movement is getting stronger every single day, every single year and eventually we will get the laws to reflect the morality and values of this nation.
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Thank you.
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