While Murphy orated, Booker and Blumenthal hustled around the floor to huddle with colleague who came to join the effort.
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On the other side of the debate, many gun rights advocates say by making even one more gun illegal-as many want for ArmaLite Rifles-that’s going to open the door to even more restrictions. Chris Murphy – held the floor for nearly 15 hours, into the wee hours of Thursday morning, and finally got their request: the promise of a vote on whether to ban gun sales to suspected terrorists and enact universal background checks. He yielded the floor at 2:11 a.m., EDT, saying he had won commitments from Republican leaders that they would hold votes on amendments to expand background checks and ban gun sales to suspected terrorists.
We believe we’re on a path to get folks on the record, and that’s a start. Sen.
“I am prepared to stand on the Senate floor and talk about the need to prevent gun violence for as long as I can”. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Jim Langevin, D-R.I., all appeared in the upper chamber to (silently) cheer on the filibustering senators. “Preventing gun violence is one of them”.
A Democratic senator on Wednesday launched a filibuster to force a vote on gun control legislation three days after 49 people were killed at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in the worst mass shooting in modern USA history.
Cornyn has proposed giving Justice 72 hours after someone on a watch list tried to buy a gun to determine whether they could purchase the weapon. Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican and frequent Obama critic, accused the president of being “directly responsible” for the shooting because, he said, Obama had allowed the growth of the Islamic State group on his watch.
During the hours long demonstration, Murphy spoke emotionally about the 2012 attack on students and teachers in his home state’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, pointing out that four years and multiple mass shootings later, federal gun laws remain unchanged.
In Congress, the attack has spurred another bitter fight over gun control, exposing deep frustration among supporters of stricter gun laws that no level of mass casualty seems to be enough to force gun control opponents to reconsider.
For years America’s political leaders have been at a stalemate on gun legislation.
Murphy conceded that the current gun reform bills are not flawless, but urged Republicans against “allowing the ideal to be the enemy of the good”.
It has been almost a decade since Congress passed significant gun reforms. In April 2007, Congress passed a law to strengthen the instant background check system after a gunman at Virginia Tech who killed 32 people was able to purchase his weapons because his mental health history was not in the instant background check database.
In the Sandy Hook shooting, 20 of the 26 people killed were children.
Senator McConnell’s spokesman, Don Stewart, said Senator Murphy’s tying up of the Senate floor had delayed legislative action on guns and other issues, although there were no votes scheduled on Wednesday afternoon. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that would let the government bar sales of guns and explosives to people it suspects of being terrorists.
Democratic senators put their collective weight Wednesday behind two gun control measures: Feinstein’s proposal, and a measure jointly written by Sens. Even after the Newtown, Connecticut, shootings of schoolchildren, the Senate could not pass a bipartisan background checks bill.
The No. 3 Democrat, Chuck Schumer of NY, and Cornyn made clear in separate remarks to reporters that the parties remain deeply divided.
Also during the filibuster, National Rifle Association said that people on the Terrorism Watchlist should be banned from buying guns.
“I think a lot of people agree with me but I want to really hear what they have to say”, Trump told Fox News on Wednesday night.
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Sen. Ron Wyden calls for action on gun control.
