Background Checks

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am going to be joined on the floor over the course of about an hour or so by Members of the Senate who are desperate for our colleagues to wake up and recognize that the time for action to quell the epidemic of gun violence in this country is now. It was also last week. It was also a month ago and a year ago and 6 years ago. It was also nearly 7 years ago, after the shooting in my State of Connecticut that felled 20 little 6- and 7-year-olds attending first grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

We tend to pay attention to the mass shootings--the ones in Odessa, El Paso, Dayton, and Newtown--but every single day in this country, 93 people die from gunshot wounds. Most of those are suicides, but many of them are homicides, and others are accidental shootings. When you total it up, we are losing about 33,000 people every year from gun violence and gunshot wounds.

Those numbers may not be that meaningful to you because it is a big country, but how does that compare to the rest of the world or at least the rest of the high-income world? Well, that is about 10 times higher than other countries of similar income and of similar situation as the United States. Something different is happening here. It is not that we have more mental illness. It is not that we have less mental health treatment. It is not that we have less resources going into law enforcement. The difference is that we have guns spread out all over this Nation, many of them illegal and many of them of a caliber and capacity that were designed for the military in which this slaughter becomes predictable. We have a chance to do something about it right now in the U.S. Congress. We have a chance to try to find some way to come together over some commonsense measures.

I just got off the phone--a 40-minute conversation with the President of the United States. I was glad that he was willing to take that amount of time with me, Senator Manchin, and Senator Toomey to talk about whether we can figure out a way to get Republicans and Democrats on board with a proposal to expand background checks to more gun sales in this Nation. In particular, we were talking about expanding background checks to commercial gun sales. That is certainly not as far as I would like to go, but I understand that part of my job here is to argue for my beliefs and my convictions but then try to find a compromise.

There is no single legislative initiative that will solve all of these issues, but what we know is, if you want to take the biggest bite out of gun crime as quickly as possible, increasing the number of background checks done in this country is the way to go. All we are trying to do here is make sure that when you buy a gun, you prove that you aren't someone with a serious criminal history or that you aren't someone who has a serious history of mental illness.

In 2017, about 170,000 people in this country went into a store, tried to buy a gun, and were denied that sale because they had an offense on their record or a period of time in an inpatient psychiatric unit, which prohibited them from buying a gun. Of those 170,000 sales that were denied, 39 percent of them were convicted felons who had tried to come in and buy a gun, many of them knowing they were likely prohibited from buying those guns.

The problem is, that isn't a barrier to buying a weapon--being denied a sale at a gun store. Why do we know that? It is because just a few weeks ago in Texas, a gunman who went in and shot up 7 people who died and 23 who were injured failed a background check because he had been diagnosed by a clinician as mentally ill and had triggered one of those prohibiting clauses, but then he went and bought the gun from a private seller, knowing that he wouldn't have to go through a background check if he bought the weapon from a place in Texas that didn't have a background check attached to it. He then took that weapon and turned it on civilians.

This happens over and over again every single day. Estimates are that at least 20 percent of all gun sales in this country happen without a background check. These aren't gifts of guns to a relative or a loaner to somebody who is going to go and use it for hunting on a Saturday or Sunday; this is about legitimate commercial transactions, 20 percent of which, when they involve guns, happen without a background check.

We also have plenty of data from States that have decided to expand background checks to make them universal. States requiring universal background checks for all gun sales have homicide rates that are 15 percent lower than States that don't have those laws.

In Connecticut, we have research showing that when we extended background checks to all gun sales through a local permitting process, we had a 40-percent reduction in gun homicide rates. Compare that with the State of Missouri, which repealed its permitting law, which was their way of making sure that everybody who buys a gun has to get a background check. They saw a 23-percent increase in firearm homicides immediately after they started allowing people to buy guns without a background check.

There is your data. It is pretty incontrovertible. You can get pretty immediate and serious returns--safety returns--if you expand background checks to all gun purchases. But the benefit to a U.S. Senator who has to go back for reelection every 6 years is that not only are background checks as a legislative initiative impactful, they are also very politically popular. In fact, very few things are more popular than expanding background checks to more gun sales.

Ninety percent of Americans want universal background checks. Apple pie is not that popular. Baseball is not that popular. Background checks are. You are not going to get in trouble with your constituents if you vote to expand background checks to all commercial sales or all private sales in this country. You are going to get rewarded politically if you do that. I don't argue that that is the reason you vote for background checks, but I think you should accept the plaudits that will come to you from your constituents if you support this measure.

I don't think the President has made up his mind yet. After spending about 40 minutes on the phone with him this afternoon, I don't know that the President is convinced yet that he should support universal background checks.

I was with the President right after the Parkland shooting, and he said he would support universal background checks, and then he didn't support them after speaking to representatives of the gun lobby. I am sure the gun lobby will come in and talk to the President this afternoon or tomorrow and try to explain to him why he should once again endorse the status quo.

The status quo is not acceptable to Americans in this country. People are sick and tired of feeling unsafe when they walk into a Walmart. Parents are heartbroken when their children come home and tell them about the latest active-shooter drill they participated in. I know that from direct experience, having listened to my then-kindergartner tell me about being stuffed into a tiny bathroom with 25 of his other colleagues and told by his teacher to remain as quiet as possible because they were practicing what would happen if a stranger came into their school. Some of the kids knew what it was really about and some of them didn't, but my 7-year-old--6 years old at the time--knew enough to say to me: ``Daddy, I didn't like it.'' No child should have to fear for their safety when they walk to school.

I am not saying that universal background checks can solve all of our gun violence issues in this country. I will say that beyond the lives that it will save, it will also send a message to our children and to families in this country that we are not encased in concrete, that we are trying our best to reach out across the aisle and come to some conclusion to at least save some lives.

I will tell you that peace of mind, that moral signal of compassion and concern that we will send, will have a value, as well, next to and beside the actual lives we will save.

Leilah Hernandez was 15 years old. She was a high school student when she was shot by the gunman in Odessa, TX. Her grandmother Nora explained how Leilah would spend a lot of her time with family and would drop by after school to visit her grandmother. She described Leilah as a happy girl who adored her parents. She was described at her funeral as ``a naturally shy girl who became a quiet leader on the basketball court.''

Lois Oglesby was 27 when she was killed in the Dayton shooting. Her friend Derasha Merrett said: ``She was a wonderful mother, a wonderful person.'' According to the children's father, Oglesby face-timed him after she was shot, saying ``Babe, I just got shot in my head. I need to get to my kids.'' She died that day in Dayton.

Jordan and Andre Anchondo were 25 and 23 years old when they were amongst the 22 who were killed in El Paso. The couple had dropped their 5-year-old daughter at cheer practice, and then they went to Walmart to pick up some back-to-school supplies. Their 2-month-old son Paul was with them. He survived the shooting, probably because it looks like Jordan died shielding her baby, while Andre jumped in front of the two of them. The baby was found under Jordan's body and miraculously suffered only two broken fingers.

On August 31 in Buffalo, NY, Norzell Aldridge saw an altercation happening from a distance. He went over to the altercation to try to defuse the situation. He was a youth league football coach. As he tried to deal with this altercation, he was shot and killed. One of his friends said: ``The guy died a hero trying to save somebody else's life.'' One of the folks who work in football with him said: ``His legacy will always be never give up, give it your all, and now his legacy is through his son.''

You haven't heard of Norzell because he didn't die in a mass shooting. He is just one of the routine gun murders that happen every single day in this country. It matters just as much as those that occurred in El Paso and Dayton and Odessa, and we can do something about those right now.

I am begging the President to come to the table and agree to a commonsense background checks expansion bill that will save lives. I am begging my colleagues here to do the same--figure out a way to get to yes. There is no political liability in it for you. There are thousands and thousands of lives to be saved.

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