A Connecticut senator who received accolades last week for his impassioned response to the Uvalde shooting on the Senate floor now believes Republicans are eager to sit down and discuss solutions to address mass shootings.
On CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Sen. Chris Murphy told anchor Margaret Brennan that he’s seeing more interest from Republicans in seeking bipartisan reforms than at any point in his career since the terrible Sandy Hook shooting in his home state during the Obama administration.
“Republicans are not willing to support everything that I support, like banning assault weapons, but I really think that we could pass something that saves lives and breaks this logjam that we’ve had for 30 years,” he told Ms Brennan.
More Republican senators, such as Susan Collins, who supported red flag legislation last week, are “coming to the table” than at any other time in recent memory, he added.
In addition, the Democratic senator said he was willing to compromise on matters that Democrats have been reticent to embrace, such as additional law enforcement officers in schools, in order to encourage Republicans to make sacrifices of their own.
The senator could “vote for some things that harden our schools that make me a little uncomfortable, frankly, if Republican are willing to vote to tighten up the nation’s firearms laws in a way that they have been unwilling to do previously,” Mr Murphy told CBS, adding: “That’s the nature of a compromise.”
In recent days, several senators have expressed similar hope, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has stated that the chamber will vote on gun legislation with or without GOP backing. According to news reports, Maine’s Susan Collins, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, and others are huddling over the recess that began at the end of last week with the intent of reaching a compromise; currently on the table is a federal grant programme that would incentivize states to pass red flag laws. Uvalde shooting
Some chamber veterans, such as Maryland’s Ben Cardin, have been wary to predict success. Mr. Cardin told Fox News Sunday that “the urgency is there,” but he was sceptical that any measure would pass the Senate’s tightly divided chamber.
“Well, the jury’s out on that,” he told Fox. “We’ve tried on so many different issues and have not been successful even to start debate, whether we deal with gun safety issues or we deal with immigration or we deal even with small business. We’ve not been able to get 10 senators to allow us to even start debate. So we’re going to have to wait to see.”
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