This Friday, May 24, marks two years since the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two educators were killed.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) joined OnCall4Kids, a national nonprofit made up of doctors who advocate for stronger gun control, to call on Congress to prevent future shootings.
Murphy has been advocating for solutions to gun violence since he was inaugurated in January 2013 — one month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
“We are losing a generation of children in this country to the trauma of gun violence as they experience it, even though they never get shot,” Murphy said. “Because the fear that they have to live with every day is literally corrupting these kids' brains, making it unable for them to learn.”
Gun violence is a top cause of death for children in America, according to the CDC.
Murphy said the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he championed a month after the Robb Elementary School shooting, has led to fewer firearm-related deaths.
“In the first year after we passed that bill, urban gun violence rates dropped 12% — the biggest one-year drop in the history of the country,” Murphy said. “It is soon to not be the biggest one-year drop in the history of the country because we are on pace for a 20% reduction from 2023 to 2020.”
Murphy called on Congress to support the downward trend with further legislation.
“Nothing worth fighting for in this world is easy,” Murphy said. “No political movement that you read about in the history books succeeded the first or the second or the third or the fourth time, the only successful political change movements that make the history books are those that were so convinced of the righteousness of their cause. They did not let after failure dissuade them, that they knew that they were right.”
Murphy is currently co-sponsoring Ethan’s Law, which would mandate the safe storage of firearms when there are children in the home. The bill, already passed in the Connecticut Legislature, is named after Ethan Song. Song was 15 years old when he was accidentally shot and killed while playing with an unsecured firearm in Guilford, Connecticut.
That bill was introduced by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
