Dismissal and indepth analysis of the days global headlines inside story on aljazeera hi im Steve Clements and i have a question what is it about america that makes it number one in the world for death by gun lets get to the bottom line. Before the coronavirus hit before the Opioid Epidemic before many other invisible killers another epidemic has ravaged america for generations and thats extreme violence towards each other and an inability to bring guns under control the United States is the only country in the world that has more guns than people if you live in America Today you can buy a fast action Assault Rifle thats been Battle Tested in places like iraq and afghanistan most of the time people owning guns is not the problem honors like the hunt millions of people believe that having a gun keeps them safer and theres a line in the United States constitution and it gives people the right to possess private weapons tie those guns to human natures tendency towards violence even more intense in America Today given the heat generated by deep racial and economic divides and america comes out on top as one of the most violent and most likely to die by gun nations in the world my guest today has been wrestling with this complicated and emotional debate head on for the past 8 years he is senator chris murphy of connecticut and hes just published a deep and heartfelt book on the issue the violence inside us senator murphy thank you so much for joining us so i have read your book and this book starts out with the story of yourself essentially in school challenging another boy to a dual of sorts with fists and i was fascinated by this because i you know reflected on my own moments in school with fist fights and you said theres more that is going on with guns and violence in america than we are really letting on tell us why you started your book this way. You know people as the 1st well thank you for having me on i really appreciate it people who see me on t. V. Talking about the issue of violence likely think that i think violence begins and ends with a gun and what ive attempted to do in this book is for people that are curious about why america is such a violent place tell the whole story and the story really begins with human nature begins with biology i opened with the story of my 1st fistfight one that i lost spectacularly in 1st grade on my schools playgrounds but you know almost every single one of us at some point our life has had a feeling of rage inside is that to cause us to want to hurt someone else and thats because our instinct for aggression is biological and so i thought it was important to start the book by recognizing bath and as you now know the rest of the book i think is a very pretty fair presentation about why america has become so violent i come to the conclusion that much of it is due to a nation that is awash in guns when you have such easy access to weapons ordinary arguments that might not end up in death in other countries are lethal but america is violent for a lot of other reasons are racist past history phased in violence a melting pot of cultures that tend to come in conflict with each other america has a very unique story one that probably pointed us in the direction of having more violence in other nations we just essentially decided to pour kerosene on a smoldering fire by deciding to have a lusus gun laws in the world. You know one of the fascinating things about this book which i highly recommend people read is how critical you are of yourself and then yes where literally black ministers are screaming at you and saying what it took this incident where white children died to finally get you in to this subject matter i thought it was very revealing that you put this out about yourself that sandy hook that other mass murders were what triggered you as a new and and brand new u. S. Senator coming in but what do you think about their statements that all of us have been late to the game with a kind of genocide thats been going on in this country particularly within the black community for a long time. You know ive read a lot of political memoirs over the years this is not a political memoir really is a book about american violence the history and politics of it but ive tried to be really honest and really open in this book i think that you know what ails politicians today is our inability to be real and authentic and ive tried to do that here and so i admit in the book that i was lacking an emotional connection to an issue prior to sandy hook and that i could sense that there was you know maybe something missing in my political makeup that all changed when i met those families in december of 2012 i also admit to being so mortally embarrassed by the fact that i was blind to the reality of what was going on in places like the north end of hartford i grew up a stones throw away from the north end of hartford and when i 1st went there after sandy hook as i describe in the book those mothers and fathers were furious with me you know they said listen we grieve for these young boys and girls in sandy hook harder than anybody else because we know what its like to lose your son or daughter but why in or did it take the murder of white kids for you to come to the north end of harvard and start caring about the murder of black kids because before sandy hook ever happened 20 young men and women had died in hartford by gun wounds this year and i my life changed in so many ways in december and january of 20122013 but i came to realize that the mission of the anti Gun Violence Movement has to be much broader than just Mass Shootings that occupy the news and ive tried to be true to that and i try to be true that in this book what is keeping the legislative branch of government from making smarter gun control policies than they are doing now. Well i also see even this book tell the story of the n. R. A. The developments of one of the most powerful Political Forces that we have seen in modern politics and i think you have to understand the power of the n. R. A. Understand why congress hasnt been able to be moved to action despite the fact that 90 percent of americans want things like universal background checks the n. R. A. You know started off as a really sleepy. Progun control organization representing responsible hunters and gun owners it was transformed in the 1970 s. To become the leader of a sort of vast right wing infrastructure Whose Mission was to destroy government and to oppose any and all Government Intervention in our lives and that movement became Strong Enough such that when sandy hook happened they were ready for us they were ready for those families and we decided that day when we lost the background checks bill that was written by joe manchin and pat to me in 2013 was that we were going to build a Political Movement that was just as strong as theirs and so well the 1st half of this book is a story of american violence the history of it the development of the development of the gun lobby the back half of this book is a story of our movement and how we built something that is now i would argue stronger than the honor a we date 30 some odd and are a a rated members of congress and 2018 i think were on the verge of winning control of the senate and 2021 you might finally see that background checks bill passed which will save thousands of lives in this country because we are going to become a Political Movement that legislators fear more than they fear the gun lobby do you believe that american citizens have the right to own private arms. I came to the conclusion in part to research on this book that we do that there is a constitutional right to private ownership of guns and this will surprise some people because many of my many fellow antigun violence advocates dont believe that believe that in fact the 2nd amendment simply speaks to the ability of militias to organize and so i spent some time in this book telling the story of the founders and temps on guns and the story of the 2nd amendment and i think this will be really helpful for people a lot of folks you know dont want to get into arguments about gun rights because you know they think that there are a whole knows more about the 2nd member that may do well you get a primer in this book on the 2nd amendment and i come to the conclusion that while the 2nd amendment is probably mostly about militias and the reality of needing militias to have access to guns our Founding Fathers did believe in a common law right to gun ownership and i just think its really smart for our movement to acknowledge that and to say listen we dont want to take away your guns if youre a law abiding gun owner and we actually dont think the constitution allows for that i think if we if we landed on that ground we would ultimately be much more successful in finding Common Ground with some of our opponents i think is a very interesting point i mean let me show you in the audience a tweet from the n. R. A. Which says if joe biden wins he will destroy our 2nd amendment and america will become an unrecognizable so the n. R. A. Is planting in the minds of people that you and your movement are trying to take guns away from them where is the marketing on the other side of that do you think you need to go when you had an encounter with a guy that you share in your book you said you know Donald Trumps trying to you know let me keep my going you folks are trying to take it away and you talk through with them and you both ended up on the same page it was fascinating moment i thought why isnt that becoming you know sort of a larger piece of your message. Well i think it really its important for us to take this head on and thats why i spent some time in the book discussing the importance of democrats and advocates of stricter gun laws framing the message before we jump into policy and i think it is important for us to recognize that there are lots of gun owners out there who think we have an agenda that we dont have to really think that i believe in gun confiscation and the reason that im for background checks is so that i can get a catalog of everybodys weapons to make it more easy for the government to come snatch them that of course is not true but i think the argument is stronger if we acknowledge that we dont have the legal ability to do that even if we wanted to do that i also explained in the book that well our founders probably believed in a common law right of gun ownership they also believed in pretty heavy gun regulation it might surprise some folks who are followers of the president or the gun lobby to know that america had really strict gun control laws on the books during the writing of the constitution you have to register your weapons or how much gun power youre out there were big portions of the population that werent allowed to own guns and so we have a legacy in this country of regulation of firearms that starts with the very people that wrote the 2nd amendment. You wrote this real strong critique of your colleagues about not taking action after incident after incident after incident even after you know when you had members of Congress Shot steve sillies Gabby Giffords and so im interested in whether you feel that we are finally at a moment or are we going to be continually doing shows like this where we come back and say wow theres another notch in the belt but we did not move the ball forward. Well i do think were at a moment and i give this speech to antigun violence activists all the time in which i remind them that the great social change movements in this country the ones that you read about in the history books are you know not those that gave up after they met an obstacle or 2 they are there the. The organizations in the movements that persevered through failure and failure and failure and weve had a lot of failures right we still havent passed a meaningful change in our federal gun laws weve actually had a lot of success at the state level weve got a lot of success pressuring the private sector to do better but yet we havent gotten that major antigun violence bill passed through congress but we got passed through one house of congress in 2019 i think that if we win control of the senate we will get the votes necessary to pass the senate and joe biden will sign it so were there and its pretty remarkable that we have come this far in such a short period of time from 2013 where we you know couldnt muster votes despite having the majority of the senate represented by democrats i think were close and part of the reason that i wrote this book is to you know give people an Entrance Point to become more educated activists i think folks you know dont want to just know about background checks they want somebody to explain to them why america is so violence and that story is a really complicated one its not just about guns its also about a system of racial oppression its also about a desire of many to hold on to certain hierarchies and i think this book which is you know not overwhelming to read is going to turn a lot of people into much more passionate much more educated much more effective activists that will help us get over the hump in 2021. And what about the fear industry senator you know about bulletproof backpacks about you know training for you know high intensity conflict the Security Industry what we see happening in beat you know really the militarization of case youre 12 schools in a way when you look at the defenses and systems going in are we building a selffulfilling prophecy to some degree that people are getting addicted to this kind of. You know predilection for expected violence. You know in the book is the story of sort of the immediate moments that i went through after sandy hook and i describe walking out of a funeral and i cant remember how many of them i went to a new town in the weeks following and seeing the 1st statement from the n. R. A. You know we thought of that moment in the week after sandy hook of the n. R. A. Was you know going to come to the table and maybe not be for all the things that i wanted but at least be constructive and of course as we remember now they took this incredibly hard line wayne la pierre comes out and essentially says the only way to protect our schools is to load our schools up with guns and the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun that was wrong then and its wrong today and well you know i dont want to stop anybody from purchasing a gun if they feel they need it to protect themselves or their family i want to make sure that Everybody Knows the data and the data is that if you have a gun in the house its 10 times more likely to be used to kill you or to. And in a criminal murder committed by you venue that is to be used against an intruder whos coming into your house thats the reality and so yes people buy a lot of weapons because of the things that they fear and the n. R. A. And the gun industry has done a great job of convincing people that guns will protect them the reality is that guns does tend to end up being used in suicides in accidental shootings or in other kinds of homicides not in protection of you or your family and people need to know that. What about the other parts of the ecosystem pamela hagan her book the gunning of america you know talked about something you refer to a bit which is how the gun industry became clever in the way it marketed itself that it sort of pied it the spirit of independence while the french here may be disappearing you know endowed with the 2nd amendment of the constitution you know can take matters in your hand you know they used to write you know winchester is right you know its the way to be manly is to have a gun and trying to this and one of things i love about your book is how you get into the psycho behavior old dimensions of guns gun ownership and you look at the you know at ghettos you look at gangs you look at the one ups manship and you tell the story of a young man shane oliver who tried very hard not to get caught up in that and then died and i would love to hear that and hear about these dimensions that you see a particularly guys unable to stand down. Yeah im a im a stones throw away right now from my office here in connecticut my office here in connecticut is in the coal firearms factory they dont make firearms there any longer but that is the place that the repeating revolver was invented in the 1800s which transformed the firearms industry and shortly thereafter. The sales of those weapons exploded in the United States because we made a decision not to control the ways in which those weapons got into civilian hands and you are right from the early days of the gun marketers recognize that they could romanticize the notion of gun ownership that they could tie it to ideas like individual ism an entrepreneurship and by doing so they could get a lot of people into the hands into the business of buying weapons but as you also note i do start this book not was story of sandy hook this book is in the story of sandy hook i start this book with the story of shane oliver a young man who didnt make it past the age of 20 his entire life was consumed by violence he had to learn how to fight at the early age to protect himself he set up his own water bottle selling business when he was 10 so that he had an excuse as to why he couldnt join the drug gangs and he got killed over a fight about a girl who was a fight over a girl he threw a punch and the guy he threw a punch at happened to have an illegal weapon in the front seat of his car he went and grabbed it and killed shane oliver just 3 blocks away from where im sitting today in Hartford Connecticut my home and its important to understand how violence and poverty track each other that the more economically desperate you are the more likely you are to be the victim or the perpetrator of violence and thats been true throughout Human History this book is about changing our gun laws but its also. Recognizing that if we dont lift up communities that are so close in economic desperation which lets be honest by and large tends to be communities of color then you cant escape the cycles of poverty shane was killed not just because there was easy access to guns in hartford but also because his life as a poor young africanamerican in hartford was defined by violence from the very beginning right you know senator you and i know each other and we know he has i dont i dont agree with what Lawrence Odonnell said about you but Lawrence Odonnell essentially described you as a kind of guy who checked off all the boxes got it all done right life of privilege you know white guy from rich part of connecticut you know ran for this office got you know kind of bland unspectacular and you acknowledge this in the book that you took an extraordinary risk and you you launched one of the most powerful filibusters in the u. S. Senate with cory booker and other people down there on the floor of the senate with you id love to hear because part of what im wondering whenever i read a book like yours is your story replicable can others find a way through it because they dont come packed with all your experiences and knowledge right now but have you been able to penetrate the rich the powerful the ambivalent with Something Different and move from what Lawrence Odonnell calls you at that moment from being bland to spectacular and i want to acknowledge that Lawrence Odonnell said you did the spectacular in that you did take a risk. Yeah this is sort of one of the more interesting moments of my political career i come home 2 days after having conducted this filibuster and turn on m. S. N. B. C. And theres Lawrence Odonnell doing a you know 10 minute monologue on me in which he makes this point that im the least likely person in the world to do something as disruptive as the filibuster he sort of says listen this is a guy who played it safe who sort of climbed every rung of the latter. You know who just showed no signs of being somebody who would take as big a chance as standing by himself on the senate floor for 15 hours and demanding people listen to him and i basically say at the end of this book that hes kind of right that i you know probably had played a little bit safer than most that i probably was wary of taking big chances and that filibuster i think and i hope is proof that im not the same person that i was before i went through the events of late 2012 and i tell the story of texting my wife as im standing there getting ready to launch this filibuster i say kathy i think im about to make a horrible mistake i think im about to stand up here take control of the senate floor and nobodys going to notice of course thats not what happened we ended up getting votes on these measures and those votes helped move the debate forward and my hope is yes that people see my story and decide to take some chances and some risks in their own life to try to save lives i hope that i show right its possible. Real quick chris when when. Foreigners think of america and youre asked what theyre most disturbed by they write down the word guns you share that do you believe are you optimistic that that will one day change and they will have other images up their minds and minds about america other than gods you know this was a story from the obama years thats probably different day for foreign commentators and watches the United States probably would write down trump trump trump and trump when asked for the 3 or 4 things that they 1st think about when they consider the United States but my point is that our gun violence epidemic is not just about domestic politics it is also about International Politics our influences weekend around the world when people look at america and cant come to grips with why we dont get serious about the carnage on our streets our influence has never been simply about the strength of our military it really has mostly been rooted over the years in the strength of the american model and the strength of our economy our democracy and our compassion for each other and so i make this argument in a in one chapter of the book that if you want to. Fix americas influence in the world and were going to have to work really hard that after donald trump is gone then you have to recognize that. A strong safe america domestically is a big part of what gives us influence in other parts of the world and guns is a big part of that american project of reclamation well senator chris murphy thank you i want to congratulate you on the publication of your book the violence inside us and i will just say without you know ill just be blunt i hope you you move this forward and i hope we get to see a sequel that has a slightly different direction instead of finding and thank you so much. Great thanks a lot steve so whats the bottom line in america there are just a lot of guns and theres been a horrible Mass Shootings in schools houses of worship movie theaters Department Stores dance clubs workplaces and yet americans just keep buying those guns there is a constitutional right to own them no doubt but not a right to have 0 regulation or to buy weapons of war for private purposes but more and more americans are now willing to stand up and say we need background checks Assault Rifle shouldnt be in the streets and our children shouldnt be having active shooter drills in the 2nd grade just maybe this is the moment the senator murphy and his fellow lawmakers will finally be able to find a Common Sense Solutions to this very american problem that just resists going away and thats the bottom line. Keeping law and order is a primary function of any state. When protecting the people making Police Brutality a domestic incident became a global law. 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