WASHINGTON – Today, during a U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science hearing, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) defended President Obama’s executive actions on gun violence and called on his colleagues to provide the resources necessary to ensure timely and effective implementation. Today’s hearing was the first congressional hearing on the President’s recently-announced executive actions to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and reduce gun violence.

“At the heart of this is a disagreement about what the executive action actually says. I hope that as we have this debate, it is not anchored in the perceived intentions of what the Administration is ‘quietly and secretly’ planning to do, but that any objections are based in the actual text of executive order,” said Murphy. “That’s what we’ve been missing in this hearing. If you come back to the text, it says what we all agree on—that we should enforce existing law, we should require people engaged in the business of selling guns to get licenses wherever they do so, and we should exclude anyone who is just selling firearms occasionally from their personal collection.”

Murphy urged his colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to provide sufficient funding to effectively enforce current law and the new executive actions. At the hearing, Attorney General Loretta Lynch laid out budget requests for Fiscal Year 2017, including $35 million to sustain the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) expansion, $35.6 million for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for 200 additional Special Agents and Industry Operations Investigators, and increased resources to help process federal firearms license applications.

Murphy also thanked Mark Barden, Sandy Hook resident and co-founder and managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, for testifying at today’s hearing and for the holistic approach Sandy Hook Promise takes to address gun violence. Barden’s 7-year-old son Daniel was killed in the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.

Video of Murphy's remarks can be seen here: http://bit.ly/1nyAhyW