WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Sunday joined MSNBC’s Weekends with Jonathan Capehart to discuss the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

Murphy highlighted President Biden’s leadership on gun violence: “I think it's important to understand that Joe Biden cares about this issue in his bones. He has been a leader from day one on this issue because he knows how devastating it is to the families who have experienced gun violence. But he knows what families like mine are going through. My kids are going through their active shooter drills right now, and that is a unique kind of trauma that every family and every child is going through.”

Murphy explained how the Office of Gun Violence Prevention will ensure the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is implemented as effectively as possible: “The good news is we passed the first serious anti-violence bill in 30 years last year. It is actually having an impact. Violence rates are coming down in 2023, in some cities by over 10 percent. And so we need to keep the foot on the accelerator. We need to keep implementing the provisions of last year's law, but there's a lot of provisions in that bill. There are five changes in gun laws, all of those have to be implemented. There's $15 billion in spending on mental health, school safety, community safety. We want to make sure that every community gets access to that money. And now that we have an office in the White House that is dedicated not only to implementing the 2022 bill, but also exploring what are the next options available to try to keep this progress going. I think that it's a new era and a new tool for the White House to make sure that we keep this momentum heading in the right direction.”

On one of the successes in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Murphy added: “One of the things we did is to say that anybody under 21, who wants to buy an assault weapon now has to go through an enhanced background check. There's a 10 day waiting period right now for young buyers of assault weapons. And we've seen already that we have stopped multiple, potentially very violent, young people in the middle of a crisis from buying a weapon. We probably saved dozens if not hundreds of lives just by that one narrow provision.”

On gun violence as a winning electoral issue, Murphy said: “You talked in your previous segment about the fact that young voters are starting to turn out in higher numbers, and if that trend continues, there's no question that Joe Biden and other leaders on the issue of gun violence are going to be elected to office. And what young voters want to see is that when they turn out, things happen, right? Sometimes we tell you that your vote is going to make a difference, but then you don't see it. Well, we can show that elevated young voter turnout, Gen Z turnout in 2018 and 2020 elected majorities in the House in the Senate that passed a gun violence bill that broke the back of the back of the NRA, and that has resulted in violence rates going down. And so that proof of concept is really important.”

Earlier this year, Murphy and U.S. Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.-10) introduced legislation to establish an Office of Gun Violence Prevention in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

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