WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Sunday joined CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper to discuss the Supreme Court and its recent decision to strike down a federal ban on bump stocks. In his conversation with Jake Tapper, Murphy also discussed President Biden’s support for Ukraine and the impact of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on efforts to address gun violence.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to reverse a ban on bump stocks, Murphy called on Republicans who once supported the ban to work with Democrats to pass legislation: “I think it's really scary that we've lost Republican support for banning machine guns. That's what a bump stock does. It turns a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun. With one pull of the trigger, you can fire hundreds of rounds at one time. And of course this is a Republican administration that banned bump stocks. At the time, Republicans in the Senate and the House were supportive of it. But now that they've got a Supreme Court that seems ready to unwind the entirety of the Second Amendment and take away from Congress or the executive branch the ability to keep our community safe, they’re once again lining up behind the gun industry… I would hope that Republicans who said back during the Las Vegas shooting that they want bump stocks regulated, now in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, would join us. If we pass a law, the Supreme Court says that they would honor that law.”

Murphy cautioned: “My big worry, Jake, is that this Supreme Court has been signaling in some of their decisions on guns that they are ready to fundamentally rewrite the Second Amendment and take away permanently the ability of Congress to do simple things, like require people to go through a background check or move forward on taking dangerous weapons like AR-15s off of the streets. So I think this court is poised to make it very hard for Congress or state legislatures to be able to regulate guns and keep our communities and schools safe.”

Murphy raised concerns over the dubious ethical standards and growing politicization within the Supreme Court: “There's a crisis on the court, in particular with respect to Justice Alito and Justice Thomas. What Justice Thomas is engaged in is just a grift, right? He's got a major political player on the outside who absolutely has political and business interests at the court paying off a justice. Justice Alito is openly displaying affiliation with political causes in public. I think it would be irresponsible the president not to talk about the fact that this court is becoming brazenly corrupt and brazenly political, and it's up to the American people, this election, to do something about that. It's also up to Congress to step up and pass a code of conduct, a code of ethical conduct for this court, before it's too late.”

Murphy highlighted President Biden’s leadership in supporting Ukraine and drew a stark contrast between the president and Donald Trump: “There's no doubt that Joe Biden has been the president that is allowed Ukraine to survive and to be able to fight another day. Without Joe Biden's support for Ukraine, Congress would not have passed this latest tranche of aid. And it's just the reality that President Biden has to do two things at once. He has to campaign for reelection—the fact of the matter is, there are going to be a handful of massively funded billionaires on the Republican side that are going to put lots of money into this campaign. Joe Biden has to raise money to counter that. This peace summit, though, was extraordinary. And the fact that the entire western world came together around a simple premise: that Ukraine should be sovereign, free, and independent. And Donald Trump at that very moment was attacking the ability of Ukraine to fight for itself and signaling that if you elect Donald Trump president, he is likely going to hand Ukraine to Putin, which will upend the entire post-World War II order and potentially get the United States in direct conflicts with countries like Russia and China. An incredibly dangerous moment. A clear contrast between Joe Biden, who's going to stand up for the free world, and Donald Trump, who’s going to hand the free world over to autocrats and dictators.”

On Father’s Day, Murphy remembered the students who lost their lives at Sandy Hook and honored the families who have turned grief into action: “Today is Father's Day, and I have two sons who are about the same age as those kids, a little bit younger, and I have had the gift of being able to watch them grow up over the last 12 years. A gift that was stolen from those parents in Sandy Hook. A lot of those parents have become part of a movement to try to change the laws of this country so that that never, ever happens again. There's good news to celebrate today. Urban gun homicides over the last two years have dropped by 20 to 30 percent. There are all sorts of young men and women who are alive today who are celebrating Father’s Day with their father because of the laws that we passed, laws that were made possible in part by the families from Sandy Hook who turned that grief into action. So we have a lot of work to do to make sure that something like Sandy Hook never happens again, that every kid gets the chance to graduate. But we have some reason to believe that this country is starting to turn the corner and change our laws in a way that makes our kids and our families safer.”

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