WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday delivered remarks on the U.S. Senate floor to highlight the importance of passing common sense gun laws, including expanded background checks and banning ghost guns, in order to curb violent crime. Murphy applauded the Biden administration’s efforts to address gun violence in our communities and called on Congress to take action to keep guns out of the wrong hands. In his remarks, Murphy also shared stories of gun violence in Connecticut.

“[I]t is not a coincidence that in 2020, gun sales in this country spiked by 40 percent. An extraordinary increase in gun sales. And homicides in this country increased by 30 percent. Violent crime is increasing in the country. You can't miss that if you turn on the news at night, and there can be no doubt that our nation's gun laws, the loosest and most loophole-ridden in the nation, are a primary contributor to this spike in gun crime,” said Murphy.

Murphy continued: “[E]very year that goes by that we choose as a Congress to not close these loopholes, to not simply say that if you're going to buy a gun on a commercial market in the United States you just have to prove that you're not a gun trafficker, is another year that we essentially endorse and facilitate the murder of thousands and thousands of Americans. And there is a clear connection between this increase in gun sales and this increase in criminal activity. Why? Because along with those legal gun sales come all sorts of gun sales that do an end around on the background check system.”

“[O]ur constituents are concerned about the rising rate of gun homicides in this nation; they expect us to do something about it.  And I'm not saying that there is only one solution. I'm not saying that changing our gun laws is the only step that we should take to try to do something about the rising rates of gun homicides in this country,” Murphy said.

Murphy concluded: “There's a longer story as to why people have become so desperate as to resort to gun violence in order to mediate disputes or to project power. But the prevalence of so many more guns in our country today than just a year ago. The prevalence of so many more illegal guns due to intentional choices made by this body is a big part of the story. And I hope that we will be able to bring before this body bipartisan legislation that will close those background check loopholes very soon to give this body a chance to do something about the rising rates of gun violence in this country.”

Last month, Murphy applauded President Biden’s new initiatives to prevent and respond to community violence and ensure public safety. 

A full transcript of Murphy’s remarks can be found below:

"My colleagues, it is not a coincidence that in 2020, gun sales in this country spiked by 40 percent. An extraordinary increase in gun sales. And homicides in this country increased by 30 percent. Violent crime is increasing in the country. You can't miss that if you turn on the news at night, and there can be no doubt that our nation's gun laws, the loosest and most loophole-ridden in the nation, are a primary contributor to this spike in gun crime.

"I wanted to spend just a few minutes this afternoon making sure that all of my colleagues understand that if we want to do something about violent crime in this country, then you cannot continue to close your eyes to the fact that we are allowing criminals all across this country to traffic dangerous weapons that are being used in gun homicides.

"First, let's burst the bubble of the gun lobby. Their primary argument is that more guns keep people safer. Well, that's not true. It's never ever been true. Study after study tells you what your common sense should already tell you. In fact, one study makes it very plain. On a nearly one-for-one basis, the more guns you have in your community, the more crime you are going to have. One study says this--what they found was that for communities that saw a one percent increase in gun ownership, guess what they also saw? A corresponding one percent increase in gun homicides. Thus, it should surprise no one that as the number of guns increase in this country, the number of gun crimes increase in this country.

"Now there are a lot of reasons for that. But again, you don't have to search deep into the data to understand why. Give you just one example, a family that I'm pretty close to in Hartford, Connecticut. Young man named Shane Oliver was shot years ago, right down the street from where I live in the capital city. And he was in an argument with some young men about things they said about his girlfriend who happened to be with him. It just so happened that there was an illegal gun sitting in the front seat of one of these cars. An argument over a girl, that in any other high-income nation in the world would have at worse resulted in some punches being thrown, in this neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut resulted in a gun homicide. Shane Oliver doesn't live on this earth any longer. He was taken from his parents, Pastor Sam Saylor and his wife Janet, when he was 20 years old because there was an illegal gun that just happened to be sitting in the front seat of a car. In almost any other country in the world, there's not a gun sitting in the front seat of another 20 year olds car in the middle of Hartford, Connecticut. Access to guns means more gun crime.

"But here's the other problem. We know there's been a 40 percent increase in gun sales, but those are just the sales that are reported to the criminal background check system. What we know is that somewhere around 20, 30 percent of all gun sales in this country don't happen with a background check attached to it. Those are gun sales that very often are going straight to criminals, straight to gun traffickers. And so, if there's been a 40 percent increase in background check transfers, there has likely also been a 40 percent increase in the number of guns that have been transferred to criminals, transferred to gun traffickers, the people who are selling them to the folks that are going to use them in gun crimes.

"Here's a study out of New York. The New York [Attorney General]'s office recently reviewed aggregate gun trace information for about five years. And what they found was that 74 percent of the recovered guns in New York, normally recovered because they were used in a crime, came with a known source state that wasn't New York. That's interesting, right? Three quarters of the guns that are being used in crimes in New York aren’t being bought in New York. There's a reason for that. You have to go through a background check in New York if you want to buy a gun. And if you're a criminal, you can't get a gun in New York at a gun store because they have background checks and because they don't have internet sales or gun show sales without background checks either.

“What the [New York Attorney General]'s office also found was that half of the guns that came from outside of New York came from six states, all six states with really weak gun laws. Meaning there is this very intentional Iron Pipeline of guns in this country. Coming from states with no universal background checks, places where gun traffickers can go and buy guns at gun shows or online, and then bring them to states like New York or Connecticut or New Jersey, and sell them on the black market. And what we also know is that there's a really short period of time between when these guns are being purchased and when they're being used in crimes, which shows an intentionality, which shows a very clear commercial market around the purchase of guns in places without background checks, the sale of those guns to potentially violent individuals, and the commission of crimes.

"Of the 1 million crime guns that were traced to this country between 2015 and 2019, more than 1/3 were used in a crime within just three years of their initial retail sale. This short time-to-crime timeline, it's a strong indication that these guns were purchased with the intent to divert them for criminal use.

"And so every year that goes by that we choose as a Congress to not close these loopholes, to not simply say that if you're going to buy a gun on a commercial market in the United States you just have to prove that you're not a gun trafficker, is another year that we essentially endorse and facilitate the murder of thousands and thousands of Americans. And there is a clear connection between this increase in gun sales and this increase in criminal activity. Why? Because along with those legal gun sales come all sorts of gun sales that do an end around on the background check system.

"Now, thank goodness President Biden is doing something about this because there is a new loophole that criminals are taking advantage of—the ghost gun loophole. In California, today, 30 percent of the confiscated guns are un-serialized. Think of that, 30 percent of the guns being confiscated in California today by the ATF have no serial number on them. That's largely because of this new phenomenon of ghost guns - guns that are assembled from a kit, not guns that are purchased at a store.

"In Connecticut, a convicted felon who couldn't have bought a gun in a gun store in Connecticut because he's a convicted felon, used a ghost gun to shoot his girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter and 16-year-old-son before turning the gun on himself. People who know they can't buy guns in gun stores or online in a place like Connecticut that has universal background checks, are now assembling ghost guns and committing crimes. The Biden administration is taking action, but so should we.

"Mr. President, I come to the floor to share this with my colleagues because our constituents are concerned about the rising rate of gun homicides in this nation, they expect us to do something about it.  And I'm not saying that there is only one solution. I'm not saying that changing our gun laws is the only step that we should take to try to do something about the rising rates of gun homicides in this country.

“There's a longer story as to why people have become so desperate as to resort to gun violence in order to mediate disputes or to project power. But the prevalence of so many more guns in our country today than just a year ago, the prevalence of so many more illegal guns due to intentional choices made by this body is a big part of the story. And I hope that we will be able to bring before this body bipartisan legislation that will close those background check loopholes very soon to give this body a chance to do something about the rising rates of gun violence in this country.”

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