MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Chris Murphy

Interview

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O`DONNELL: Joining us now is Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

Senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.

I know you spoke for millions of Americans not just in Connecticut but all over the country. When you made that point on the Senate floor that what`s happening in our schools is a choice. It is a choice being made by Republicans in Congress.

MURPHY: Of course, it is. Of course, it is.

And, listen, that anger last week from me is the anger of a parent, right? I have a seventh grader and a fourth grader. And it`s terrifying to me that this generation of kids goes to school expecting that a shooting will happen at the place where they learn.

And it is of course a choice that we`re making because there is no other country in the high income world that experiences this rate of gun violence. It`s not that the United States has any more mental illness than other countries. It`s not that the United States spends any less money on law enforcement than those other countries.

The difference is that the ease of access here in the United States to these high-powered weapons is just absolutely differentiating from every other nation that we do business with. These broken brains in other countries may end up in a fist fight -- maybe the worst case someone getting stabbed. But here in the United States, it ends up with dozens of people getting killed in places like Sandy Hook and others across the country.

So we make a choice to populate this country with wildly powerful guns that are designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. And we get the policy that we have chosen to live with. That is 100 people every single day dying from guns.

O`DONNELL: How do you deal with your own personal anger about this? You know, Sandy Hook obviously was in your state. And that was -- that was a time if there was ever a moment where something was going to be done, it was going to be when we saw kids in kindergarten and first grade assassinated in their school, just mowed down. And that ended up moving, changing nothing.

You -- you have gotten to know the families of those kids, those victims, worked with them closely. How do you -- how do you -- how do you deal with your own personal anger about the body you work in, the Senate, doing absolutely nothing?

MURPHY: So, I mean, let me maybe contest the premise a little bit because this is a popular idea that if Sandy Hook didn`t change this country`s decisions about guns, if Sandy Hook didn`t force Congress to action, then nothing will. I`m convinced that this is, as you know, just about good old- fashioned political movement building.

That in 2012, December of 2012 when Sandy Hook happened, the antigun violence movement essentially didn`t exist. The Brady group had been sort of carrying the torch for years.

But, you know, there were hundreds of activists not the tens of thousands we have today. And the NRA and gun lobby was that their zenith, was at their peak in 2012.

But we`ve spent the last nine years building a movement. We are getting to the point where we are stronger than the NRA and the gun lobby. We may not be there yet.

But remember, it took 10 years from when Jim Brady was shot to the passage of the Brady hand gun bill. It took over a decade from the time in which the country saw Emmitt Till`s open casket to the passage of the civil rights bill.

Sometimes these movements take a decade or more to build and I just have confidence that we`re part of one of those great social movement changes.

So, that`s what I tell these families is that if you believe in honoring your children`s` death with action, then we all have to stick with this and we just have to be so confident in the righteousness of our cause that we don`t let any of these obstacles get in our way.

O`DONNELL: Is it time to start taking the language that Republicans use in their own arguments about other subjects like sanctity of life and applying that to this subject?

MURPHY: I -- at least think we have to call it out on their B.S. I mean, it`s really stunning how cavalier Republicans are with life after birth.

It`s not just the way they accept the carnage that exists in this country due to gun violence. It`s also the way in which they just wave a hand at 700,000 people who died from COVID, how they`re fighting measures designed to save people`s lives in this pandemic.

They care a whole lot about the unborn but once you`re born, there doesn`t seem to be a lot of concern for the livelihood of individuals who are on this planet with us.

And so, whether we adopt their phraseology or not I don`t know, but I think more people need to do what I did last week, which was call them out on this pretty incredible hypocrisy.

O`DONNELL: Senator Chris Murphy, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

MURPHY: Thanks, Lawrence.

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