Dem Sen. Murphy: ‘I Don’t Accept the Idea that I’m Supposed to Shut Up and Not Talk About’ Gun Control

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) responded to his colleagues in the Senate and others accusing him of “politicizing” the tragic mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX, which has reportedly left 19 children dead.

Murphy, who in an interview the night before pushed for gun control in the wake of the shooting, pushed back against the notion that he was “supposed to shut up and not talk about changing laws” following shootings. He argued that not politicizing the shootings was “a fiction created by the gun industry.”

“I’m in the business of trying to save lives, and so that means every single day, I wake up to try to strengthen our nation’s gun laws to make sure that less madmen get their hands on weapons that allow kids to die,” Murphy emphasized. “So, I don’t sit back and take a single day off in this fight. And so yes, that does mean on days where there are mass shootings, I am also talking about the need to strengthen our gun laws, but this sort of sense that when a mass shooting happens, you need to not talk about policy change, that is a fiction created by the gun industry because they know that in these moments, the American public is going to stand up and demand change and so they want to muzzle politicians and legislators during these moments so that there’s no chance of that momentum from the public being mobilized into action.”

“So, I don’t accept the idea that I’m supposed to shut up and not talk about changing laws of this country to protect my kids in the wake of one of these shootings,” he continued. “I actually think I have an obligation in these moments to be even more urgent in my outreach to my colleagues because these are copycat killings because I know that the next one is coming around the corner.”

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