Sen. Chris Murphy Wants ‘No Screening’ for Immigrants, More Gun Control

During a January 30 appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) criticized President Trump’s immigration suspension and said he would rather see a move toward “no screening” and the passage of more gun control.

Murphy claimed that the U.S. has ISIS “on its heels,” and the suspension of immigration from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia will “[hand ISIS] a path to rebirth.”

Random House executive editor Jon Meacham was also on the program and asked Murphy, “Do you see any merit in the President’s action? What do you believe should be the security screening? What should be the vetting for immigrants coming in?”

Murphy responded by saying, “The four countries that were of origin for the 9/11 attackers, none of them are on this list,” and then quickly shifted to push “a discussion about a pathway in which there is absolutely no screening” for immigrants. He cited U.S./Europe agreements on the VISA waiver program as an example of U.S. entrance “without almost any security vet.”

He expounded:

So, I would go towards a sort of European bent in looking at screening. And then maybe let’s just make sure that if folks get to this country, and we suspect them of having connections to terrorism, that they shouldn’t be able to get an assault weapon. That’s a huge liability in our law today.

Also on the morning of January 30, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman appeared on CNN and suggested more gun control would keep the U.S. safer than President Trump’s immigration suspension. Like Murphy, Friedman focused on “assault weapons,” claiming the focus should be on barring persons on the terror watch list from buying such guns.

Both Murphy and Friedman overlooked the fact that neither of the San Bernardino attackers (December 2, 2015) nor the Orlando Pulse attacker (June 12, 2016) were on a terror watch list, so the passage of such gun control would have been impotent to stop them. The key to stopping attacks is keeping attackers out of the country or sending them out via deportation, once we realize they are here.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.