WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday released the following statement ahead of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary holding the first congressional hearing on gun violence prevention in nearly a decade. The hearing “Preventing Gun Violence: A Call to Action” at 10am on Wednesday will kick off a series of hearings and legislative action to strengthen gun laws in America. 

“If it weren’t for the years of mobilizing and advocacy around the issue of gun safety, this would not be possible today,” said Murphy. “The vast majority of violence in this country today is inflicted by guns, and far too many Americans have experienced it firsthand. Whether you’re sending your child off to school, attending a movie or concert with friends, or walking to a grocery store, you should not live in fear that someone will open fire. I applaud House Democrats for beginning the long overdue process of starting a conversation on how to fix our country’s broken law guns, and I urge my Senate colleagues to do the same.” 

Since his time in the Senate, Murphy has been a vocal critic of our nation’s gun laws. Last month, Murphy reintroduced the Background Check Expansion Act to expand federal background checks to the sale or transfer of all firearms by private sellers, with certain reasonable exceptions. Murphy also co-authored the bipartisan Fix NICS Act with U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), which improves federal and state reporting of relevant criminal history records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Murphy also joined U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to introduce the Automatic Gun Fire Prevention Act, a bill to close a loophole that allows people to use bump-stocks to turn semi-automatic weapons to automatic weapons, and the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019, a bill to ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. 

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