An impassioned speech by the congressman who formerly represented the town of Sandy Hook has gone viral in the wake of a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed at least 18 children.
Chris Murphy, a Democrat who came to Congress representing the district that included the Connecticut town and is now a Senator, begged his colleagues to finally pass legislation that addresses the nation’s continuing gun violence crisis.
“What are we doing here?” Senator Murphy asked, tears brimming in his eyes, moments after learning that 19 students had been massacred.
“This isn’t inevitable. These kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else,” he continued. “It is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue.”
Speaking to reporters afterward, Murphy did not mince words about the anticipated Republican reaction to the shooting – that the United States needs to do more to address mental illness and that guns are not inherently the problem.
“Spare me the bullshit about mental illness,” Murphy said. “We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we’re not an outlier on mental illness … We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their arms on firearms. That’s what makes America different.”
In his emotive speech on the Senate floor, the senator then clasped his hands together and pleaded with Republicans to help Democrats pass meaningful gun reform legislation.
“I am here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees to beg my colleagues: find a path forward here,” he said.
Few senators understand the horror mass shootings inflict on a community quite like Murphy, who spent the hours after the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school consoling families who had lost children and loved ones.
He spoke about the lasting trauma inflicted on students, schools and communities. Since that massacre 10 years ago when 20 children and six adults were killed, Murphy has made it his mission to enact gun control reform only to be disappointed again and again as the bills fail to overcome the Senate filibuster.
Murphy asked Republicans: “Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, or putting yourself in a position of authority if your answer is that, as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing.”
He asked again: “What are we doing?”
“Sandy Hook will never ever be the same. This community in Texas will never ever be the same. Why? Why are we here if not to try to make sure that fewer schools and fewer community go through what Sandy Hook has gone through, what Uvalde is going through.”
The tragedy in Texas appeared to be similar to the 2012 mass shooting in Connecticut, where 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his way into the locked building and then killed 20 first graders and six educators with an AR-15-type rifle.
Murphy expressed hope that compromise on gun control measures is possible and urged fellow lawmakers to take a stand. Democrats lack a large enough majority in the Senate to pass gun control reforms without Republican support.
“I understand my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything that I may support, but there is a common denominator that we can find,” he said, acknowledging the problem of gun violence cannot be solved overnight.
