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Sen. Murphy calls for action to curb gun violence

Members of Connecticut's congressional delegation are criticizing colleagues in Washington, D.C., and expressing frustration that gun control efforts have been stymied since the 2012 deadly Newtown school shooting.  Murphy was joined Friday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Reps. Elizabeth Esty and John Larson in expressing frustration with the lack of support for curbing firearms.

 

Below is the full text of Murphy's speech during the press conference.

 

Make sure that the 20 million people coming to this country every year get a higher security screening to make sure they have no connection to terrorists.  Change gun laws to make sure that criminals are not getting guns, or that individuals that are thinking about mass slaughter don't have a military style assault weapon or a 30 round clip with which to kill more people.  Keep terrorists from buying guns.  Fix the mental health system, a common element of many of these mass shootings, to make sure the people contemplating this kind of violence have access to mental health services that can prevent them from taking that drastic step.

 

We have a broad array of options with which to work from, and what is so disgusting is the Congress is accepting none of them.

 

We don't have to accept this as inevitable.  We don't have to live in fear every single day.  But Congress has to get off their ass and start working on behalf of the American people to stop this mass slaughter.  We're just not doing it right now.

 

Sympathies are important.  Prayers are important. But members of Congress don't get elected in order to send out sympathy tweets, we get elected to change laws to make people safer.

 

Use that one week [before Congress adjourns for the holidays] to show the American people that we are capable of doing something, anything, to try to cut down on these mass shootings.

 

When the bill in the wake of Sandy Hook to make background checks nearly universal [failed] that was a really low day.  But Thursday was comparable.  Thursday was just as bad in many respects as the day that the Sandy Hook background checks bill failed, because on Thursday we thought we would get 100 Senators to stand together and say that terrorists shouldn't be able to buy guns.  We couldn't even get a majority of the Senate because of the power of the gun lobby and because of this malaise that's fallen over congress that nothing can be done.

 

Something can be done.  Something has to be done.  We are here to say that we are not giving up.  I will offer my mental health bill next year, we will continue to press on these changes.  We will go out and build a national movement around changes to these laws.  The status quo is unacceptable.

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