Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy started a Filibuster on Wednesday to force the Senate to pass legislation that would deny suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms. He was quickly joined by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-Maryland), Senator Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) and others. The proposed legislation would also require universal background checks.
“I’m going to remain on this floor until we get some signal, some sign that we can come together on these two measures, that we can get a path forward on addressing this epidemic in a meaningful, bipartisan way,” Murphy said. Murphy, whose home state of Connecticut saw the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, is a top advocate of gun control in the Senate.
The filibuster comes on the same day that Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump announced he will meet with the National Rifle Association about restrictions on gun purchases for people on terror watch lists or no-fly lists.
I will be meeting with the NRA, who has endorsed me, about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no fly list, to buy guns.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2016
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The Senate filibuster and comments from Trump come in the wake of the Orlando mass shooting at Pulse Night Club on Sunday, an attack that left 50 dead including the suspected shooter, Omar Mateen, who had pledged himself to ISIS during the attack.
Truth Axis and Attack the System author and political analyst Keith Preston, however, thinks that both Democrat and Republican politicians are using the Orlando massacre to further infringe on civil liberties and constitutional rights.
“During the course of this presidential campaign, neither Donald Trump nor the Democratic Party establishment have uttered even a single word of criticism of the ever expanding police state in the United States. In fact, the leading candidates of both parties have pledged to strengthen state repression in a variety of areas,” Preston said. “Both Trump and Clinton are committed to the perpetual expansion of curtailments of civil liberties and constitutional rights under the guise of fighting terrorism. Candidate Trump and the Senate Democrats are using the Orlando tragedy as a pretext for further eradication of the right to bear arms.”
Preston also noted that gun control laws disproportionally effect the poor and minorities, not necessarily the “racist, gun-toting redneck” caricature that Democrats seem to target. “It can be expected that those who suffer most from an expansion of repression in this area will be the poor, minorities, and political dissidents,” Preston said.
You can watch the filibuster live at C-SPAN or watch it from the beginning.
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