After a nearly 15-hour filibuster, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said Thursday morning that lawmakers would hold a vote on expanding gun control legislation after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting.
Murphy, Connecticut’s junior senator, took to the floor at 11:21 a.m. Wednesday and said he would keep speaking until a deal was reached. Shortly after 1:30 a.m. Thursday he signaled that had happened.
“We have been given a commitment, on a path forward, to get votes on the floor of the Senate, on a measure to assure that those on the terrorist watch list do not get guns … and an amendment … to expand background checks to gun shows and to Internet sales,” he said.
“We still have to get from here to there,” Murphy said. “But we did not have that commitment when we … started. And we have that understanding at the end of the day.”
At around 7 a.m. Thursday, Murphy appeared on CBS This Morning, noting that he had only been awake for about an hour after sleeping for two hours.
“I do think our filibuster made a difference,” Murphy said. “The senate had no plans [to discuss gun control]. We made incredible progress to get this back on the agenda for this week.”
Asked to gauge whether Republicans would be compelled to act, Murphy said, “My instincts tell me they are are moving on this issue. If you listened over the course of the day yesterday, there were a number of Republicans who were madly scrambling to find some common ground.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who asked frequent questions of Murphy to offer him a spell and remained in the chamber for nearly the entirety of the filibuster, asked one last one a few minutes before 2 a.m.
“My question generally to my colleague from Connecticut is: How should we close tonight? And aren’t you glad there’ll be no more questions?” he said with a smile.
In his closing remarks Murphy told the story of Dylan Hockley, standing in front of a photograph of the first-grader who was shot and killed in the Sandy Hook School shooting in December 2012. The lives lost in Newtown were frequently referenced by Murphy and others as an impetus to act.
“He was a special special boy, who was going to turn into a special young man,” Murphy said. He told his colleagues how Hockley died in the arms of Anne Marie Murphy, the special education aide he loved dearly who was also slain in the shooting. Police, Murphy said, found the boy’s body wrapped in her embrace when they entered the school.
“It doesn’t take courage to stand here on the floor of the United States senate [for hours] … it takes courage to look into the eye of a shooter and instead of running, wrapping your arms around a 6-year-old boy and accepting death as a trade for just a tiny little itty piece of increased peace of mind for a little boy under your charge,” Murphy said.
“I ask you all this question: If Anne Marie Murphy could do that? Then ask yourself: What can you do, to make sure that Orlando, or Sandy Hook, never happens again?”
Murphy finally yielded the floor at 2:11 a.m.
Murphy was joined in his marathon effort by Democratic colleagues that included Blumenthal, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Ben Nelson of Florida, Charles Schumer of New York, and Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. As the day wore on, a stream of Democrats came to the floor to speak, relieving Murphy for brief stretches as the filibuster stretched into the evening, with 40 joining the effort by late Wednesday.
“We are here today to say enough,” Booker said shortly after Murphy began. “I’ve cleared my entire day. I’ve cleared my evening events … so I can stay on this floor and support Senator Murphy.”
Under Senate rules, as long as he stood standing — and didn’t try to nap or take a bathroom break — Murphy could keep talking.
As the filibuster continued, it became a Twitter sensation. Murphy said his office had received more than 10,000 calls of support. The 14 hour, 50-minute effort would go down as the eighth longest filibuster in the Senate since 1900.
The rare maneuver by a freshman senator quickly captured national attention on news websites and social media. After 49 people were shot and killed by a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle early Sunday at an Orlando nightclub, Democrats ramped up their push for gun legislation.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said he supported the watch list proposal in principle, but that an amendment proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., didn’t have a way for people who were on the lists in error to get themselves removed.
“We don’t want terrorists to be able to walk into a gun store and buy a gun, but we don’t want an innocent law-abiding citizen to be denied his Second Amendment rights because he’s on a list with a bunch of terrorists,” he said.
But attempts at compromise on the amendment appeared to collapse Wednesday, underscoring the difficulty of resolving the divisive issue five months before Election Day. Feinstein, who had been involved in talks with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said there was no resolution on a potential compromise between her bill and a version he has offered that would let the government delay firearms sales to suspected terrorists for up to 72 hours. Prosecutors would have to persuade a judge to block the transaction permanently, a bar Democrats and gun control activists say is too high.
“The NRA, to the best of my knowledge, has been a major impediment to sound gun control efforts in this country in the nearly 24 years I’ve been here,” she said.
David Popp, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, criticized Murphy for holding up the chamber, which was scheduled to vote on an appropriations bill that included funding for the FBI, the Justice Department and other agencies.
“Sen. Murphy’s effort today prevents the Senate from processing any amendments, including amendments he supports, as well as efforts proposed by Republicans to help prevent terrorist attacks here at home,” he said.
The filibuster idea came together Tuesday afternoon when Democrats met to caucus, and there was quick agreement that it was time for something dramatic.
“We have definitely got their attention,” Blumenthal said a few minutes after stepping off the Senate floor late Wednesday afternoon. He said the filibuster was a “tactic we have adopted … in the time-honored tradition of the Senate” and said Democrats, who are in the minority, were sending a message that “the time for business as usual has passed on this issue.”
Early in the filibuster, Sen. Nelson shared a photograph of blood-covered shoes that belonged to a trauma surgeon at an Orlando hospital who treated victims from the nightclub shooting, recounting the surgeon’s story from a first-person perspective. Schumer said the chamber was “shameful” for not acting, and Durbin talked about how gun violence had wreaked havoc on the city of Chicago.
Others, like Warren, told stories of the Orlando victims, including Kimberly “KJ” Morris, who was a 37-year-old Torrington native who worked as a bouncer at the Pulse nightclub.
Connecticut’s U.S. House members were on hand to support Murphy. Reps. Jim Himes, John Larson and Joe Courtney took part in their own protest by walking out of a moment of silence Monday. Rep. Elizabeth Esty’s office tweeted a photo of her delivering a care package of food and Red Bull to Murphy.
Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, tweeted a message of support: “Some fights are too important to stay silent,” she said. “Preventing gun violence is one of them. Stand strong @ChrisMurphyCT.”
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy offered encouragement, too. His office tweeted: “Stand strong, @ChrisMurphyCT. The majority of Americans demand action.”
Blumenthal said Connecticut had tough gun laws, which were enacted following the Newtown massacre, but “guns have no respect for state boundaries.”
“We in Connecticut are vulnerable because of the weaker laws in other states,” he said. “This national protection is vitality important.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, shared the story of a Vermont journalist, Paul Heintz, who recently bought an AR-15 rifle through a transaction set up on the Internet without a background check or producing any identification.
“If we made universal background checks mandatory, and made it illegal to sell guns without a universal background check, might that make a difference?” he said.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., helped lead a bipartisan effort with Toomey in 2013 to expand gun background checks, but the measure was defeated. He also took part in Murphy’s filibuster.
“Why we hit a road block, I don’t know,” Manchin said of the failed legislation. “We know that law-abiding gun owners will do the right thing.”
Murphy said he was frustrated with congressional inaction in the wake of yet another mass shooting.
“I am most of the time around here a team player, but I’ve had enough,” he said. “I just couldn’t bring myself to come back to the Senate this week and pretend like this is just business as usual. We’ve got to do something different.”
An Associated Press report is included in this story.
