Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) launched a filibuster led by Democrats in the Senate today.
Senator Chris Murphy leading filibuster (D-CT)
Democrats are using the freshness and pain of the Orlando Massacre to press for real gun regulations to effect necessary gun control. Senator Chris Murphy led the filibuster. He is the senator that represents Newtown, Connecticut, the town where a gunman murdered 26 people, including 20 children in 2012.
“Having come through the experience of Newtown,” Murphy said. “I’ve had enough. It’s been four years. And nothing has been done. Despite the fact that 90% of the American public wants us to act. The vast majority of gun owners want us to expand the reach of background checks. Polls suggest that 80% of Americans believe that people on the terrorist watch list shouldn’t be able to buy guns. There is no controversy out there about these two provisions. We can work it out. We can work it out today.”
Senator Murphy then named senators with bills that are ready or near ready for a vote. He then said he will filibuster as long as he can.
“I am going to stand on this floor and talk about our experience in Sandy Hook, Orlando’s experience, the need to come together,” Murphy said. “On this issue of making sure that dangerous people who have designs of mass murder don’t get dangerous weapons as long as I can so that we can give time to try to figure out a path forward to bring this body together on the issue of changing our gun laws so that they reflect the will of 90% of the American people.”
Murphy and the Democrats want a vote to close the gun-show loophole. They also want to deny guns to those on the no-fly list.
Deja vu all over again?
These bills failed in December. This how Politics reported on it.
One day after the deadliest U.S. mass shooting in nearly three years, the Senate voted down a pair of gun-control measures that were designed by Democrats to put Republicans on record on the charged issue. …
The first gun control measure proposed by Democrats was legislation from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would deny people on a federal terrorism watch list the ability to purchase guns. The measure failed, 45-54. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) voted with Republicans to reject the measure, and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) crossed over to vote in favor of the gun restrictions.
The second vote revived legislation from April 2013, written in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of 20 elementary school children in Newtown, Conn., with bipartisan backing that would enact universal background checks. The four Republicans who backed the bill then — Kirk and Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who co-authored the measure with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — also voted in favor of the Democrats’ plan on Thursday. Heitkamp also opposed the second gun-control measure, which was blocked on a 48-50 tally.
If Democrats keep their spine and stand up to the gun death-industrial complex, Americans will reward them with their vote.
Watch the filibuster live feed here.
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