Dem senator says Trump launched ‘dizzying campaign’ of violence before Brown shooting
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inboxGet our free Inside Washington emailGet our free Inside Washington emailA Democratic senator who was a champion of gun reforms in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in his state blamed Donald Trump on Sunday for encouraging a “dizzying” campaign of violence, hours after authorities announced that a person of interest was apprehended for a mass shooting at Brown University.Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press that the president’s rhetoric and actions since returning to the White House made violence “more likely” in America.Representing the state in the Senate since 2013, the senator is a leading voice for gun safety restrictions among members of his party.His remarks came after America was rocked by news Saturday evening of a gunman opening fire in an academic building at the Ivy League university in Rhode Island, killing two people and wounding nine others.“He has been engaged in a pretty deliberate campaign to try to make violence more likely in this country, and I think you’re unfortunately going to see the results of that on the streets of America,” Murphy said.open image in galleryDemocratic Senator Chris Murphy blamed Donald Trump for encouraging violence after a gunman killed two people and injured nine others at Brown University (CNN - State of the Union)Of the Brown shooting, he said: “This is not shocking because over the last year President Trump has been engaged in a dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country. He is restoring gun rights to felons and people who have lost their ability to buy guns. He eliminated the White House Office of Gun Violence Protection, and he has stopped funding mental health grants and community anti-gun violence grants that Republicans and Democrats supported [in 2022].”The White House issued a furious statement in response. “Before spreading these lies, Chris Murphy should take a look in the mirror,” Trump’s deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson wrote. “Chris and his colleagues have regularly used rhetoric meant to incite their followers to violence, including smearing ICE officers as Nazis and calling their political opponents fascists.”She said assaults against ICE officers “have skyrocketed” and pointed to the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, “not to mention the other violent riots that leftists have engaged in.”“The Violent Left is a problem whether Chris admits it or not,” she told Politico.The Independent has requested further comment.This year saw a reduction in instances of mass casualty incidents involving firearms after those numbers spiked over 2018 and 2019, according to a database created by the Associated Press and USA Today tracking mass shootings reports.There were at least 154 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, killing at least 49 people and causing at least 135 injuries, according to gun violence prevention group Everytown.open image in galleryA woman leaves flowers at the scene of a mass shooting at Brown University the morning after two students were killed and nine other wounded in a mass shooting on the Ivy League campus (REUTERS)There have been a number of high-profile mass shootings this year across the United States, however, and on Sunday morning Americans awoke to the news of another tragedy unfolding in Sydney, Australia, after gunmen killed more than a dozen people and injured at least 29 others at a Jewish gathering on Bondi Beach.August and September saw two of those incidents unfold: the attack at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minnesota, followed by Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University weeks later.Both shootings renewed angry debates about gun culture and the Second Amendment in America, with Kirk’s death provoking especially passionate responses from both Republicans and Democrats. Allies of the president, including members of Trump’s inner circle who were personally close to Kirk, sought to use his death as a means of painting the broader American left as violent and dismissing charges of political violence being fomented by the right.open image in galleryAfter the Sandy Hook massacre in his home state, the Connecticut senator has emerged as one of the most prominent voices for gun reform in the upper chamber of Congress (AFP via Getty Images)Many Democrats, on the other hand, expressed condemnations of Kirk’s murder while deriding instances where the Turning Point USA co-founder had expressed racist sentiments and opposed restrictions on gun ownership meant to reduce the number of mass shootings in America.Murphy spoke out against efforts or inclinations by Republicans to criminalize dissent and Democratic-aligned organizations in the wake of Kirk’s death and announcements by the White House that the Department of Justice will go after “antifa” groups around the country. He has long blamed inaction in Washington, encouraged by the firearm and shooting sports lobby, for allowing a deadly problem to spiral out of control.A gunman killed 20 six- and seven-year-old children during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.In the aftermath, Murphy supported bipartisan legislation which eventually failed under the Senate’s filibuster threshold that would have expanded background checks and launched studies on mass gun violence in America.In 2022, in the wake of another mass shooting in New York, he gave a Senate floor speech accosting his fellow lawmakers.“What are we doing?” he said. “Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job … if your answer, as this slaughter increases, as ours kids run for their lives, we do nothing?”
