Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. It is a wonderful subtext to all of the rhetoric that comes from the gun lobby and the NRA that there is this secret agenda to essentially get the camel's nose under the tent through an expansion of background checks or a restriction on individuals who are on the terrorist watch list as far as buying guns, because the ultimate goal is to eventually parachute into people's homes and take away all of their weapons--gun confiscation. Of course, that is a mythology that has been created by the gun lobby in order to sell more weapons and in order to make people scared of their government so they have to arm themselves. There is no logic to it. As you state in reference to your question, there has never been a proposal before the U.S. Congress to engage in any of the widespread confiscation efforts that have been imagined out of thin air by these advocacy organizations.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for that question. That is why it is so important to link those two pieces together. If you really want to protect this country from terrorist attacks by a firearm--as I stated before, that is the weapon of choice for those who want to do harm to this country for political reasons--then you have to both make sure those individuals are on the list of those prohibited from buying weapons and you have to make sure when you go and buy a weapon you intersect with that list. This has been a long trend line, as both of my friends know. It used to be that almost everybody who bought a gun went into their local gun store to purchase that weapon, and over the course of time, for a variety of reasons, the means by which you bought a firearm has diversified significantly. We now have lots of sales occurring online, as we do with almost every other commercial good, and there is this buildout of gun shows, which are places where both licensed and nonlicensed dealers go to sell their guns in a very organized and controlled fashion. We have story upon story of individuals who have gone to buy guns in those gun stores in mass quantities, knowing that they would not have to go through a background check and then selling them on the black market. So someone who knows they are prohibited from buying a gun decides not to buy a gun in a gun store; instead, they go buy a number of weapons at a gun show, which is unregulated. Those individuals who are not licensed gun dealers are able to sell their weapons without background checks at a gun show, and they can get as many as they want. That is not a secret. I mean, you don't have to scratch the surface of America's gun law or debate this subject very hard to find out that there are easy ways to get guns without getting a background check. You can also go online. You can very easily buy a weapon on ARMSLIST without going through a background check. We cannot adequately protect this country from terrorist attacks by firearm unless you do both, and that is why those two are linked together. As the Senator also knows, let's not shy away from the fact that the reason we are on the floor today is that this slaughter also happens outside the realm of terrorist attacks. In fact, the majority-- 95-plus percent--of Americans who have been killed by guns were not killed in a terrorist attack, but many of them were killed by guns sold outside the background check system. This is a two for one. If there are objections on the Republican side to the provisions of the Manchin-Toomey legislation, I hope that over the course of this afternoon and this evening we can come together on those issues. If you pass some version of that legislation, which is supported by 90 percent of the American public and the vast majority of gun owners, in conjunction with putting terrorists or would-be terrorists or suspected terrorists on that same list, then you have not only protected our country from terrorist attacks, but you have also addressed this epidemic that we all live with on a regular basis, whether it be in Newark, Bridgeport, or, as Senator Durbin talked about, Chicago. The regularity of gun crime that is often associated with weapons that were purchased outside of the background check system is not an inevitability that we have to accept. We can do something about it by coming together today. I think that is what my friend is getting at by linking together two policies that have to be interdependent in order to protect ourselves from a terrorist attack, and it is also about this broader issue of taking on crimes in our city. I yield to the Senator from Connecticut for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I yield to the Senator from Connecticut for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal, and I want to thank you for your work on the Judiciary Committee for leading this fight to try to make sure that law enforcement has what it needs to protect this country. Again, I spoke to this broader conversation about how you protect this country from domestic terrorist attacks. I think there are a lot of people who want to drill it down to only one silo of conversation. As I remarked at the beginning, some people want to make this just about the fight in the Middle East. Some people want to make this just about surveillance. Other people want to make this just about gun laws. It is not any of those things. It is about a combination of efforts. So we have to admit that this fight against ISIS and against Al Qaeda in the areas in which they have large amounts of control is an ongoing fight. That is not going to be concluded tomorrow or next week or the month after. We think we are making dramatic progress, but it is going to take us a while. As I remarked at the outset, it also means that there is an inverse proportionality between our success in taking the fight to Al Qaeda and ISIS inside theaters of war and their importance in attacking us here at home in the sense that they are going to need to take the fight to us here if they are having less success in repelling our efforts to push them back inside the Middle East. That is where law enforcement comes in, Senator Blumenthal, and you are exactly right. Let's make it a priority to defeat ISIS. But let's admit that for the time being, they are going to try to launch lone- wolf attacks here. What we know is they generally don't go through the trouble of trying to coordinate these attacks ahead of time. So it makes it much more difficult to stop. They are trying to find someone who is on the fringes of society, who may be mentally ill or prone to radicalization and weaponize them. Sometimes it makes it difficult for law enforcement to find that needle in a haystack. What we know is that in this case, they had found that needle in a haystack. They had found him twice. Perhaps his inclusion permanently on one of these lists wouldn't have done much good because it wouldn't have prevented him from getting a firearm. There wasn't as much due diligence done as should have been. This clearly is an important tool of law enforcement, and we need to give it to them. I hope--and I think Senator Mikulski talked about this in her opening comments--we can talk about giving broader resources to the FBI and to law enforcement to do the job they need do. We ask them to do more and more, but we don't give them the resources that are necessary. If we are going to give them additional responsibilities-- keeping a better monitored, consolidated database, having a process for individuals to grieve their inclusion on it--then we have to make sure they have the resources necessary. To the Senator from New Jersey, I yield for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator. The Senator from Illinois, like Senator Blumenthal, has been a leader and a hero on this issue since before I got to the Senate, and he is exactly right. The state of this Nation is not just this repeated story line of mass shooting after mass shooting, it is the fact that even on days when there is not a mass shooting, there is the equivalent of a mass shooting happening in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, or New Orleans every single day. The numbers over Memorial Day weekend over Chicago are absolutely chilling. Think about living in a city in which, over the course of what should be a celebratory weekend, there are 60-some odd incidents of gunfire, and that is just gunfire that hits people. So it is critical we acknowledge that this epidemic that we are often focused on because of these mass shootings is an epidemic that exists every single day in this country. Senator Durbin is right that part of the reason we are asking that expanded background checks be part of this agreement that we come to over the course of today is because while we are on the bill that funds the Justice Department, while we are debating the bill that funds, in part, the background checks system, let's make sure it works. As the Senator knows, the data is clear: In jurisdictions that have near- universal background checks, there are less gun deaths--period, stop. In jurisdictions that decide they are going to apply background checks to as many sales as they can--let's be honest, you often can't get every sale, but you can certainly say, if you are selling guns online through advertisement or you are selling guns at a gun show that is organized and marketed, that those sales should be subject to a background check. In States that do that, they have lower rates of gun crimes. As the Senator knows so painfully--because Chicago sits right at the intersection of other jurisdictions--States can't do this by themselves. Even if a State decides to expand out the forums in which a gun sale is subject to a background check, if the other State next- door--let's say Indiana--has a lower standard, then your law is virtually meaningless. Of course, that is the story line in Chicago. The story line in Chicago is a handful of gun dealers--irresponsible gun dealers across the State line--selling guns to individuals who then take them into Chicago. This is certainly a debate brought on by another mass shooting, and we certainly have an obligation to make sure the terrorists don't obtain guns, but the Senator is right that this ultimately has to be an issue of doing something about our urban gun violence as well.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator for the question because of course this is a global fight against terrorism. This is not a battle that can be waged by one country and one country alone. The Senator is right that we are right now calling on our allies in Europe to take steps that would better protect all of us from these terrorist plotters. For instance, we have real concerns about the degree to which European nations are sharing data about potential terrorist plotters. Right now, law enforcement and terrorism surveillance in Europe is largely done on a country-by-country basis. Even within some countries, it is heavily siloed. In Brussels itself, I think by last count, there were six different police departments that didn't even communicate with each other. So there is a big problem in Europe about agencies not being able to talk to each other, and we are pressing Europe and Europeans to get more serious about both tracking terrorists throughout that continent and then sharing information with us. How is that relevant to the Senator's question? It is very hard for us to preach to the Europeans that they should get more serious about tracking terrorists if we have big holes in our databases as well, and we do today. From the information that is out there, we know that in Orlando, this individual was on a watch list. He came off of it. Because of the way in which the network of lists and notifications work today, the FBI was not notified when he went to buy a gun. We can have a debate as to whether he should have been prohibited from buying a gun if he was no longer on those lists, but it probably makes sense that the FBI should at least be notified so they can perhaps do some followup. As long as we have these gaps in our laws related to access to firearms for potential terrorists, then I think it is hard for us to tell the Europeans to do better. As the Senator knows, we also want to be able to connect what they know with what we know. There are American citizens who travel to other countries, and they may be radicalized in part in connection with those visits. We want to be able to get that information to the extent that a foreign country knows about the activities of American citizens when they travel abroad so that it is incorporated into our databases, incorporated into the list of people we are concerned about getting access to a weapon. I yield to the Senator from New Jersey for a question without losing my right to the floor. (Mr. SASSE assumed the Chair.)

Mr. MURPHY. That is true. I thank the Senator for making that patently clear. What we are suggesting here is that the way we can come together in this body is around the simple premise that individuals with serious criminal records, individuals who have been deemed mentally incompetent or incapable, and people on the terrorist watch list shouldn't be able to buy firearms. That is it. That is what we are talking about here today and to build out that system in an effective way that is as foolproof as possible. That has nothing to do with the limitation on an individual's Second Amendment right. If someone wants to go buy a firearm, they are not a suspected terrorist, they do not have a serious criminal record, and they have not been judged or deemed by a judge to be mentally incapable of making their own decisions, then there is nothing in what we are proposing in this body to come together on that would restrict that. I yield to my friend, the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Booker, for a question, without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank my colleague for his question. I think this is a question people throughout this country are asking today: Why are these measures we are asking for consensus on today so controversial in the Senate when they are not controversial in the American public? My colleague Senator Booker talked about the statistics. It is not just that 90 percent of the American public supports expanded background checks to make sure people aren't criminals when buying guns; it is that the majority of gun owners support expanded background checks. It is Democrats who support it. It is Republicans who support it. Similarly, on the issue at hand today, which is making sure potential terrorists don't obtain weapons, a similar majority of the American public supports that as well. There is less polling on that question, but suggestions are that 75 to 80 percent of Americans support the idea that if you are on the terrorist watch list, if you are on the consolidated list, then you shouldn't be able to obtain a weapon. The question of my colleague is, Why can we not get consensus here? I guess, at some level, it is tough for me to answer that because it seems so clear to me that I am willing to vote for those measures. I am willing to cosponsor them. I am willing to come to the floor and speak in support of them. In many ways, it is a question for those who are blocking these measures from coming forward. As I said before, I believe much of it is rooted in what I believe is a misunderstanding of the Second Amendment. It is not an absolute right; it comes with responsibilities and conditions. I think a lot of it is a misunderstanding about the data that suggests--State by State, community by community--if you have tougher gun laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals or prevent these powerful military-style assault weapons from flowing through your streets, you are going to have less level of gun homicide. So part of our effort--and part of my belief--is to come to the floor today to continually reinforce what the real story is about the nature of the underlying right and about what the data tells us, but also, Senator Booker, about what we know to be the threat to this country. Research shows that on U.S. soil, people who are seeking to commit acts of terror rely almost exclusively on guns. And when guns are used in potential acts of terror, they are vastly more likely to result in casualties--when guns are used. Now, this isn't me talking. This is an analysis of domestic terror attacks in the United States by Professor Louis Klarevas of the University of Massachusetts. He showed that since September 11, 2001, 95 percent of the associated deaths connected with terrorist attacks-- with terrorism--were committed with guns. According to a project run by the Department of Homeland Security's Center for Excellence at the University of Maryland--something called the Global Terrorism Database, which is a government database run by the Department of Homeland Security--terrorist attacks in the United States are 10 times more likely to result in fatalities when they involve guns than when they do not. Between 1970 and 2014, nonfirearm terrorist attacks resulted in deaths 4 percent of the time, whereas 40 percent of the attacks involving firearms resulted in deaths. If you really want to get down to the chilling bone here, Mr. President, listen to the words of one of the most notorious Al Qaeda operatives--actually an American who is now deceased--whose name is Adam Gadahn. He released a video in 2011. In it he said: In the West, you've got a lot at your disposal. Let's take America for example. America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle without a background check and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for? Even if his facts weren't 100 percent correct on whether you can get a fully automatic weapon at a gun show, this is clearly a message being sent by some of the most notorious operatives and recruiters within the Al Qaeda and ISIS network: Go get a gun. They are easily obtainable. Do as much damage as possible. So to answer Senator Booker's question, I guess I don't want to sit here and impute malevolent motives or intentions or the interference of interest groups on my colleagues. I just have to believe that we have the facts wrong and that we are maybe misreading our constituents. I know people who listen to the NRA are very vocal. I know they call in to all of our offices frequently and express their opinions very strongly. I will admit that the majority of Americans--and this majority exists in every single State--who support expanded background checks, support keeping terrorists off the watch list, they are maybe not as passionate in their views. So it may also be that there is a misread coming on where the American public exists on this question. I think there are more and more Americans who are rising up and choosing to make this a priority when they come to the polling places and when they talk to us. To Senator Booker, I think this is just about trying to do our best to correct the record--as the Senator said, doing our best to explain that what we are asking for is not revolutionary. It is not radical. It is simply commonsense. If we lay it out in plain facts, most of the people we represent would expect that we would have already taken care of this. If we told them we have not yet put individuals who are on the terrorist watch list on those that are prohibited from buying guns, I think they would be very surprised. If we told them that the majority of gun sales happen without background checks, I think they would probably be surprised by that. I think they expect us to act on this. I know the Senator from Nebraska is looking to ask a question. I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Nebraska for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator. It is a glaring loophole, and it is unclear why it has persisted. This idea of closing the loophole has been backed by both Democratic and Republican administrations, and I think the Senator talked about how this has been a bipartisan commitment. The George W. Bush Department of Justice supported the exact same bill that we are talking about today, in 2007. Attorney General Holder, in response to a question from Senator Feinstein at a 2009 Judiciary Committee hearing, said: I think that legislation was initially proposed by the Bush administration. It was well conceived, and we will continue to support that. Not so long ago, this was an issue that was conceived by a Republican administration. It didn't seem to become controversial until gun lobbying organizations decided that it should be. We should remember that about all the things we are discussing here, because we live in a world today in which we think the issue of gun laws is the third rail of American politics. But all of the legislation that we are talking about could not have passed if it wasn't for Republicans and Democrats coming together, whether it be to support the existing background check system or to support the existing ban on assault weapons--plenty of Republicans voted for that--or to conceive of this idea of terrorists being kept off the list. Here is how it plays out in real time. Elton Simpson is the name of the individual who opened fire on a Texas community center that was hosting an event displaying cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. I think we all agree that was an act of terrorism that was perhaps as a result of the radicalization of this individual. He was reportedly on the U.S. no-fly list. One of the Boston marathon bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was reportedly placed on two terrorist watch lists in 2011. He committed that act with an explosive device, but he also killed a police officer with a handgun. Orlando is the latest example of crimes being committed by those who were in and around this database. The Senator from Nebraska asked the question earlier: How do we make sure that people aren't on there by mistake? Both parties will only support legislation that gives a practical means for individuals to grieve the fact that they are prohibited from buying a gun when indeed they should not be. I think at some level, we should accept that in virtually every Federal database that exists of people who are ineligible to buy a gun or people who are eligible to receive Medicare reimbursement, there are occasionally mistakes. But that does not stop us from trying to engage in collective action as a community to better protect our Nation. Let's get that list right. Let's give people the ability to get off it if they are on it wrongly. But let's accept that what we know is that in 90 percent of the cases over that 10-year period where people tried to buy a gun and were on the terrorist watch list, they were able to buy it. Let's be honest. This is only one element of what needs to be a broader strategy to combat either the potential radicalization leading to violence of American citizens or this broader question of combating gun violence at-large that Senator Durbin brought up. But it is an important glaring hole that needs to be corrected. I yield to my friend from Connecticut for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator from Nebraska for his question. There is something called the consolidated watch list, which is an amalgam of a number of different databases. As the Senator understands, one of them is the no-fly list. The legislation Senator Feinstein has propounded and will propound refers to those consolidated lists and then provides the ability for an individual to contest their placement on those lists, to be able to be notified why they were prohibited from buying a gun and to be able to contest that with either the agency that put them on that list or with the NICS database itself. I take seriously this issue of due process. As we know, there are certainly people who are on that list who should not be--as, frankly, there are people today on the list of those prohibited from buying guns who should not be. There are mistakes made on the NICS list today--names that get put on there that shouldn't be put on, people who may have been wrongfully convicted. I would agree with the gentleman that it is important that the legislation we come to agreement on specifically refers to the set of lists--which I would suggest mirror the consolidated database that is maintained by Federal law enforcement--and have a very explicit right to get off that list. I don't think it is impossible that we can come together on that in very short order. I yield to the Senator from Illinois for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator for his lifelong leadership on this question. I feel as though I am in a caucus of giants here, where people are coming down to the floor--from Senator Durbin to Senator Schumer, to Senator Blumenthal--who have all been working on this issue about firearms, trying to protect Americans from gun violence far longer than I have. Of course, as one of the original authors of the bill, Senator Schumer knows better than anyone that had you known that you were building a bill that would only cover 60 percent of gun sales, you never would have designed it, nor probably voted for it, with the terms that exist today. What has happened is that over time gun sales have migrated to other places. What we are simply trying to do is to reinforce the existing intention of the law. We are not trying to change the law at all. For everybody who voted for that bill originally to make sure criminals were not able to buy guns, they did so because they believed they were going to cover the majority of sales that were done in a commercial atmosphere. Now commerce happens in gun shows and online, and we need for the system to migrate to it. The Senator is also right that protecting America from terrorist attacks is ineffective unless we do both--make sure people on the terrorist watch list can't buy guns and that the forums which that list reaches are both gun stores and gun shows but also Internet sales. Further, the Senator is right that this is the only place where this issue is controversial. This is the only place in which there is a 50- 50 argument over this question. You find any other forum in any other part of the country and it is 90-10 on this issue, which is why my friend from West Virginia has led on this because he knows that in all of our States, this is something that brings Republicans and Democrats and gun owners and nongun owners together. Maybe other things don't, but this issue does. I yield to the Senator from New York for a question.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I will yield for a question.

Mr. MURPHY. I ask through the Chair if the Senator from Pennsylvania will wait.

Mr. MURPHY. I say to Senator Blumenthal, I don't think there is any more I can offer in answer. You are correct that it is both ironic and outrageous. I yield to the Senator from Maryland for a question without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. Another qualified right of the Bill of Rights.

Mr. MURPHY. When you present these issues to the American public, they scratch their heads, or they scratch their heads because they assume already that individuals on the terrorist watch list cannot buy guns. They think it is absurd that we passed a law that subjects toy guns to a greater standard of negligence than real guns. I mean, that is what that law effectively did. That law said that if you sell a toy gun, then you are going to be subject to a higher standard of negligence if that gun misperforms than a gun company is going to be held to if its gun--its real gun--misfires. When you explain that to somebody in your State, whether you are in a red State or a blue State, they scratch their heads. It doesn't make sense to them.

Mr. MURPHY. The First Amendment is as important as the Second Amendment, but it comes with conditions and responsibilities. One of them is that you can't slander your fellow citizens. You can't yell ``fire'' in a crowded theater. There have been important limitations since the beginning of the Republic built around the First Amendment which, frankly, are as sacred as any of the individual rights that are encompassed in the Bill of Rights.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator from Illinois. I thank him for setting an example of how to speak truth to power in this body. We have talked over the course of this afternoon about the influence of special interests and how they have affected this debate. There is simply no one in the U.S. Senate who, over a period of time, has ignored special interests and money and power and just done and said and fought for the right thing over and over again. To the extent that people like Senator Booker and I made the choice to run for this body even amidst its reputation for dysfunction, it is because we hoped that when we got here we could maybe--we could maybe--equal some portion of the example that the Senator has set. So personally--and I think I can speak on behalf of Senator Booker and Senator Blumenthal and myself. Certainly, for me it has meant so much that the Senator has been here for the totality of this debate. I say to Senator Durbin, thank you. It has meant just as much to me to have all our colleagues here today. It has meant the world to me to have Senator Blumenthal, my partner, engaging in this together and to have Senator Booker, as was mentioned, in an act of wonderful sympathy, make the decision to stand on his feet for the duration of this time as well. This has been organic. We sent out the word that we thought this was something important, but this really happened of its own volition. Everything that has happened outside of this Chamber today and tonight, with the hundreds of thousands of interactions, the ten thousand phone calls that have just come into our office alone speak to the wellspring of desire there is in this country to act--to act on the issue of the epidemic of gun violence. Of course, what we have proffered here are two simple measures that we think we are on our way to perhaps getting votes on. But we don't want votes; we ultimately want agreement. Hopefully, the momentum that comes from today and tonight and the 13 hours that we have been on the floor will get us there. I will yield for a question at this point, without losing my right to the floor, to Senator Booker.

Mr. MURPHY. It shows, I say to Senator Klobuchar, that we are intentionally putting our constituents in danger, that we have data which tells us that when people on the terrorist watch list are walking into gun stores, they are getting approved at a 90-percent rate. By the way, the 10 percent who aren't getting approved because they are on the terrorist watch list--it is because they are on some other list. But that is a chilling statistic. If you play it out over the course of 10 years, it is the same percentage. Over the course of 10 years, 90 percent of individuals who walked into gun stores who were on the terrorist watch list have been handed a gun that they could walk out with. It is a small number on a year-to-year basis--200 people--but it only takes one of those individuals in order to commit a mass atrocity. I thank the Senator for coming back to the floor here tonight and making this very clear case because what we are asking for is eminently reasonable. We are asking, Senator Klobuchar, as you know, for debates and votes on two commonsense, bipartisan amendments to the underlying bill: first, legislation that would make sure that if you are on the terrorist watch list, if you are on the no-fly list, that you cannot get a weapon, that you are prohibited from buying a weapon, just like a criminal; and second, that background checks be extended to gun shows and to Internet sales so we make sure we have a net wide enough to capture these terrorists wherever they are trying to obtain weapons. That will, as Senator Durbin has said over and over again for the last 10 hours, have an ancillary effect on the gun violence that is plaguing his city, my city, and your city, Senator Klobuchar, because many of the weapons that flow into Chicago and Hartford and Minneapolis come through sales that happen outside of gun shows and that aren't subject to background checks. So it is thrilling to me, frankly, to have a floor that is full of Senators at 10 o'clock at night. It is thrilling to me, as I stated earlier, that we have been--our collective effort has been the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter over the course of the entire day. It is thrilling to me that, as I just heard, our phone lines in our office are still ringing off the hook right now as we speak with people all around the country who are demanding that we continue to stand on this floor as long as we can, as long as I can, until we get these votes. I thank the Senator for bringing this issue back to the floor. I would be thrilled to yield for a question, without losing my right to the floor, to the Senator from Washington.

Mr. MURPHY. If you walk into a gun club in Connecticut, there is going to be pretty solid consensus that criminals shouldn't buy guns. And those law-abiding gun owners who sit in those gun clubs on Saturdays and Sundays have absolutely no problem with sales online or sales at gun shows being subject to background checks because they have gone through background check. They know that on average a background check takes less than 10 minutes. They know that it is nothing more than a 9-minute, on average, inconvenience for someone who is buying a gun, and they support it further. Frankly, those guys in the gun clubs are amongst the loudest in their concern that terrorists have the ability today to buy dangerous weapons and commit mass murder like we saw in Orlando. So this consensus that exists out there in the American public is not a consensus amongst progressive Democrats; it is a consensus amongst gun owners, non-gun owners, Democrats, Republicans, moms, dads, conservatives, liberals, Georgia, Connecticut, California. There isn't a cross-section of the American public that doesn't support keeping bad guys from getting guns and thus the two reforms we are asking for here today--a law that prohibits people on the terrorist watch list from getting guns and a law that expands background checks to all of the forms in which guns are sold today.

Mr. MURPHY. Let me just respond by giving some statistics about what happened in States with strong background check laws that they require for every gun purchase. We know what the numbers are. This is unequivocal; this isn't guesswork or conjecture. We know what they are with universal background check laws and States without them. In States that have universal background check laws, 64 percent fewer guns are trafficked out of State. There are 48 percent fewer firearms suicides, 48 percent fewer police officers are killed, and 46 percent fewer women are shot to death by intimate partners. That is in States that have universal background checks, and those numbers would be even better and even stronger if we had that law applied nationally because what we know is that those intimate partners who are buying a gun in the midst of their fury, those criminals who are trying to traffic in illegal arms--all they have to do sometimes is cross a simple State line in order to find those weapons of destruction and bring them back into a State that has universal background check laws. So there is no doubt that stronger background check laws lead to fewer gun deaths. That is what the data shows. Washington is proving that, Connecticut is proving that, and it is absurd that the U.S. Congress with 90 percent of the American public supporting this proposition doesn't assure this protection for everyone who lives under the umbrella of security of this Congress.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his question. I will just remind him and others that this concept of the Second Amendment that my friend has offered is embedded in the Heller decision. The Heller decision itself--and Senator King chided me for referring to the majority opinion in that decision by Justice Scalia earlier--says very specifically that though the majority holds that there is an individual right to own a gun, that right is absolutely not absolute. He actually gives specific examples in the majority decision of ways in which you can condition that right in order to affect the public safety, like for instance, restricting the types of weapons that are bought or restricting guns and firearms from individuals who are deemed dangerous. This isn't theoretical. This is the law and the interpretation of the Second Amendment as determined by this Court. On this question of inconsistency, let's just keep it packed into the question of the terrorist watch list. I have not heard one of my Republican colleagues come down to the floor and defend the right of those on that list to get into any airplane they want and travel anywhere in the world. There is no one who has done that, nor will they, and that is because of this inconsistency--this inconsistency in which the absolute protection of Second Amendment rights is treated in a fundamentally different way than the protection of other rights. It is no less dangerous for an individual to pick up a dangerous assault weapon that can kill hundreds of people at a time than it might be in order to get on a crowded airplane. You could conceivably kill the same number of people with an assault weapon as you can with an airplane. Yet, those two rights--the right to travel and the right to own a gun--are treated differently.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New York, and through the Chair, I yield for a question from the Senator from Minnesota without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. I will.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I yield for a question without losing my right to the floor.