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Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I would like to thank Senator Warnock and others for coming to the floor today to raise this truly existential crisis, put it in front of our colleagues.

I have lost count of the number of times I have come down to the floor of the Senate to talk about this immoral anomaly in which you are subject to the risk of death by gunshot wound in the United States at a rate 10 times higher than any other high-income nation.

I wish there were a truly complicated set of factors that play into the reason why we have so much more gun violence here than in other nations, but it probably isn't that complicated. We don't have more mental illness in this country. We don't spend less money on law enforcement. We don't have angrier people. We just have a lot more guns, and we are much more permissive in this country about allowing felons, dangerous people, and the mentally ill to get their hands on guns, and we are much more permissive around the question of which kinds of guns get in the hands of private citizens, especially guns that are designed to kill as many human beings as quickly as possible.

As you can imagine, because I have a pretty high profile on this issue, when I am back in my State, I get confronted a lot by supporters of the Second Amendment, NRA members, who want to have a conversation with me about why I believe what I believe. That conversation normally starts with the assumption that I want to take guns away or ammunition away from law-abiding gun owners.

Almost without exception, when I get confronted by somebody who wants to talk about guns with me, who comes from that gun-rights side of the debate, as quickly as I can get the debate to background checks is when we start agreeing. I have found very few of those conversations in Connecticut where, even in the most heated of arguments, we don't find quick agreement on the simple idea that before you buy a gun, you should have to prove that you are not a criminal or you are not seriously mentally ill. Why? Because law-abiding gun owners have gone through background checks. They know that in 90 percent of the cases, those background checks are processed instantaneously, while you are in the store. For most of the people who are talking to me who aren't mentally ill and who don't have criminal histories, that is their only experience, is that a background check is not a barrier to purchasing a gun.

So it is just not surprising to me to hear the data that Senator Warnock is talking about--90 percent of Americans supporting universal background checks, checks on every gun sale; 89 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of gun owners, 70 percent of NRA members--because even the gun owners, even the people who feel so fired up about this issue that they want to come talk to me in the middle of a county fair, were not disagreeing about that simple policy--just make sure that people who shouldn't have guns don't get their hands on them.

Some people will say: Well, it is a hassle. It is an unreasonable barrier.

Well, I just told you that in 90 percent of the cases, they are resolved instantaneously. In the 10 percent of cases where it takes more than 5 minutes, that is normally because there is something on that person's record that we need to find out. What we know is that there have been millions of gun purchases that have been denied because felons or seriously mentally ill individuals did try to buy those guns.

But we also know that 99 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a gun store. There are 60,000 licensed gun dealers across this country who can perform background checks. That is four times the number of McDonald's restaurants in America. It is just not true that it is an unreasonable restriction of your liberty to just make sure you get a background check before you buy a gun.

Now, what are we talking about? We are talking about guns that are largely sold online and through gun shows, because the law today, the Federal law that I think we still all agree on--I mean, I don't hear a lot of my Republican colleagues proposing legislation to repeal the requirement that you should get a background check if you go into a gun store. All we are talking about is extending that requirement to the place where a lot of guns are now sold in a way they weren't when we passed the national instant criminal background check law in the early 1990s. Today, a lot more guns are sold in gun stores, and a lot more guns are sold online.

The studies that have been done about gun sales online are really troubling. One study showed that there were 1.2 million online ads offering firearms for sale that would not require a background check to be done. That same study showed that one in nine prospective buyers of guns online would not pass a background check. That is a rate seven times higher than the denial rate at gun stores. And the reason is the criminals are going online and going to the gun shows because they know they will fail the background check if they go to a brick-and-mortar store.

That is what Seth Ator did. He failed the background check when he tried to purchase a gun in 2014. But he went to a private seller online, he bought a gun, and then he used it to kill 7 people and wound 25 others in a mass shooting in Odessa.

This is not theoretical. This happens. How do you think all these guns get into our cities? It is because the criminal traffickers who have serious criminal records, who can't buy guns at a brick-and-mortar store, go to a State that doesn't have universal checks. The criminals, the traffickers, buy the guns online or at a gun show, and then they drive them up to Hartford, CT, and they sell them on the black market.

The data just tells us that people believe in background checks; they want us to pass universal background checks. And the data also tells us that it works. The numbers vary, but even the least generous studies tell us that in States that have universal background checks, like Connecticut, 10 percent fewer people are dying from gun homicides.

And, of course, my law can't fully protect the people in my State because those guns get trafficked into Connecticut from States that don't have universal background checks. And so the numbers would be even bigger if we didn't have all these loopholes.

So I agree with Senator Warnock. This just feels like a test of democracy. It really does. How does democracy survive if 90 percent of Americans--90 percent of Republicans, 90 percent of Democrats--want something and we can't deliver?

Do you want to know why people are flirting with autocracy and dictatorship? It is because, even when they agree at a 90-percent rate, they can't get what they want from their government.

I have got to tell you, something does seem pretty wrong if democracy can't deliver on a 90-percent consensus, and not a 90-percent consensus about whether your road gets paved--a 90-percent consensus on whether kids live or die, a 90-percent consensus on an existential question of survival.

So, Mr. President, as in legislative session, I am going to ask that we pass a bill that will require universal background checks in this country. I am going to ask my colleagues to respect the wishes of 90 percent of Americans and do something that we know works.

So I am going to ask, as in legislative session, for unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 494 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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