Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Senator Chris Murphy.
CNN
—
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said Sunday he was “ready to fundamentally rewrite the Second Amendment” after the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on bump stocks.
Murphy told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that the Supreme Court’s recent gun-related decisions show it’s prepared to “permanently strip Congress of its power to do simple things like require people to do background checks and to move the effort to get dangerous weapons like AR-15s off the streets.”
“So I think this court is going to make it very difficult for Congress and state legislatures to regulate guns and keep our communities and schools safe,” he said.
The Supreme Court’s strikedown of the bump stock ban marks the latest opinion from a conservative court striking down gun regulations.
Former President Donald Trump had pushed for the ban following the 2017 mass shooting at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead. But a Texas gun store owner who bought two of the weapons in 2018 and turned them over to the government after the ban was imposed sued to get them back and successfully challenged the ban.
Bump stocks allow shooters to transform a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute.
“It was a Republican administration that banned bump stocks, and Republicans in the House and Senate supported it at the time,” the Connecticut Democrat said Sunday, “But now they have a Supreme Court that is completely rolling back the Second Amendment and trying to strip Congress and the Executive Branch of their power to keep our communities safe, and they’re once again lining up to support the gun industry.”
Murphy’s comments echoed reactions from gun control groups, which on Friday argued the ruling will have dangerous implications for a country perpetually plagued by gun violence.
But overwhelmingly Republican lawmakers welcomed the court’s decision, saying they have long believed the bump stock ban is unconstitutional. The measure was enacted under the Trump administration, but many Republicans argued at the time that it was a mistaken move.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton told Tapper in a separate interview Sunday that the bump stock ban “veers close to infringing on the Second Amendment.” “I would suggest that we should crack down on violent crime and gang crime before we infringe on the rights of law-abiding Americans,” Cotton said.
While the case did not rely on the Second Amendment, it put the gun debate back on the court’s docket in one of the most closely watched disputes this year, and as such, the decision marks the latest time the Supreme Court has sided with gun rights groups.
Still, Murphy, who has made gun safety legislation his life’s work since the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, said “there is good news to celebrate today,” pointing to declining urban gun homicide rates.
“We have a lot of work to do to ensure that something like Sandy Hook never happens again and that every child has the opportunity to graduate,” he said, “but there is reason to believe that this country is beginning to turn things around and change our laws in a direction that will make children and families safer.”
