The Past, Present, and Future of Gun Violence Reduction with Senator Chris Murphy

What actually drives change on an issue like gun violence? Is it policy? Culture? Policing? Or something harder to measure?

To help answer that question I’m turning to Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Senator Murphy has been one of Washington’s leading voices on gun violence reduction, a passion that was shaped by his experience in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, where he spent time with families and saw firsthand the impact of that tragedy .

In this episode, we talk about the recent decline in gun violence nationally, what role federal legislation and local interventions may have played, and how the broader movement around this issue has evolved over time.

Chris Murphy, the junior United States senator for Connecticut, has dedicated his career to public service as an advocate for Connecticut families. Murphy has been a leading voice in the Senate, fighting for affordable health care, sensible gun laws, a forward-looking foreign policy, and a democracy and economy that serves working people. In 2022, he led the negotiations and helped pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first federal anti-gun violence bill in 30 years. 

Prior to his election to the US Senate, Murphy served Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District for three terms in the US House of Representatives. During his time in the House, he worked to foster job creation, advocate for affordable health care for all Americans, and improve homeless veterans’ access to housing. Before being elected to Congress, Murphy served for eight years in the Connecticut General Assembly. 

Senator Murphy grew up in Wethersfield, Connecticut, and attended Williams College in Massachusetts before earning a law degree from the University of
Connecticut.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast. What actually drives change on an issue like gun violence? Is it policy, culture, policing, or something harder to measure? To help answer that question, I'm turning to Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Senator Murphy has been one of Washington's leading voices on gun violence reduction, a passion that was shaped by his experience in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, where he spent time with families and saw firsthand the impact of that tragedy. In this episode, we talk about the recent decline in gun violence nationally, what role federal legislation and local interventions may have played, and how the broader movement around this issue has evolved over time. We also get into the challenges of communicating progress, why fear can persist even when the data improves, and how politics and culture shape what people are willing to believe. The numbers are moving in the right direction, but gun violence is by no means solved. This conversation with Senator Murphy is about where the future of gun violence reduction policy is heading. Let's dive in. My guest today is Senator Chris Murphy from the lovely state of Connecticut. Senator Murphy, thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Launching right in, um, what is your background? I'm really curious. How did you obviously get into the Senate? Um, how does one do that? And what motivates you specifically to focus so heavily on this work?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah, I I I guess everybody has a different path. Um, you know, I've kind of been an organizer my entire life. I think I was an organizer by birth in some ways. When I was a teenager, I was, you know, organizing student protests against an unjust high school dress code. I was the one who organized all the touch football games in my neighborhood as an elementary school and middle school student. You know, I had a passion as a kid for environmental politics, and I discovered that there was this thing you could do with your pastime or your life, politics, where you organized people for good. And I became involved and addicted to it at an early age. So I was, you know, elected to local office when I was 24, state office when I was 25, um, was the youngest senator when I got here uh two terms ago. And, you know, I still think this is an honorable profession. Uh, I've been doing it long enough that I've been able to make some really positive change. The reason that I care so deeply about the issue of gun violence, though, is, you know, because of something that happened in my state. Um, I had not worked on the issue of gun violence when I was in the state legislature, in the house. You know, it was an issue I cared about, but was not a priority issue for me. And then um the Sandy Hook massacre happened in between uh when I was elected to the Senate and when I was sworn in. And I was about the same age as all those parents. I had kids who are just a little bit younger than the kids who were killed in Sandy Hook. And uh, you know, either a lot of days that I wish I hadn't been there. Uh, you know, I was in the firehouse as the parents were being told what had happened in the school. Um, I spent a lot of time with those parents. I went to a lot of funerals and wakes in the following days and weeks. And and and, you know, I was an interloper to their grief. I don't want to overstate the the way it changed my life, but it did change my political career. I mean, I that became the issue that I woke up every day, uh, the issue uh that dominated and has dominated my career. It's it's because of that experience in Connecticut.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

So I ask a lot of people this question, but I think very few of them, probably nobody have asked to this point, have your unique perspective on this. But you look at everything that's happened nationally, enormous surge in murder in 2020, and now we're seeing this enormous historic decline. To what do you attribute all of that that we're seeing in terms of the falling murder, incredible fall in gun violence over the last few years?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah, I I mean, I guess I don't have a better read on it than anyone else. Obviously, you know, it peaked during the pandemic when people were more desperate than ever before, and it makes sense that there was going to be a decline. Sometimes, you know, there are just sort of natural peak points where you you sort of reach the maximum point of saturation. But I don't think that it is unconnected at all to the state and federal mobilization around this issue. I think the federal law we passed in 2022 made a difference. Uh, I think the billions of dollars we ended up spending in anti-gun violence initiatives made a difference. But I think the movement itself became so powerful over those 10 years, became so mainstream over those 10 years that it did fundamentally change the way that people view this issue. And I think the way in which individuals who may have been contemplating gun violence as a means to project power or to deal with inner demons thought about the decision to pick up a gun. Um, I don't think it's a coincidence that all of the major decreases in gun violence over the past 100 years come after major federal debates over gun violence, whether it's the two big bills passed in the 30s or the bills passed in 93 and 94. I think when the federal government sort of steps in and signals, not just in a statutory way, but in a moral way, that we've had enough, I think that ends up having a cultural impact as much as it does have a legal impact.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

And sort of looking forward the next decade, the next 15 years, what is the future of gun violence reduction, the future of the gun violence movement look like, gun violence reduction movement?

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Yeah. And one of the things that I think accounts for the reductions is that um we got good during the period between Sandy Hook and the shooting in Uvaldi at recognizing individuals who are in crisis or recognizing a cycle of violence before it played out and interrupting uh the uh gun violence before it happened. Um, schools got a lot better about being able to monitor kids that were in crisis. We put a lot of programming out into the schools to help them do that in the cities. We ended up figuring out how to wrap services around a handful of at-risk kids. We figured out how to get to the emergency room when there was one shooting to try to prevent the retributive shooting from happening. Uh, I think that's probably been the most important work. And so as I look at the next 10 years, I want to continue to build a bipartisan coalition around supporting that work and those interventions. I think that's the easiest thing to do because it's not as politically hot as changes in gun laws are. But then, of course, I want to get the two big things done that I think would make the biggest difference, which is universal national background checks and a ban on assault weapons. And I do think that we can get both of those things done in the next five to 10 years federally. Um so, you know, to me, those are the two big projects.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Is there a way forward on criminal justice? Um, you've probably heard this, but Washington is pretty divided. This has been an issue where, especially on the reform side, there's been a bipartisan consensus, at least in the last 10 years. Is there a way to build a bipartisan consensus on gun violence reduction that sort of takes into account the gun control versus gun rights debate and comes to sensible policy solutions?

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Well, I certainly think there is. Um, and you know, the evidence is in the bill we passed in 2022, uh, that was a bill that was, you know, obviously not everything I wanted, but it was five major changes in gun laws. And we got 15 Republicans in the Senate, which is not a small number to support it, with NRA opposition. All the Second Amendment groups opposed that bill loudly. Uh, and we still got 15 Republicans to support it. And and some of them did that because they, you know, actually had a moral reckoning with themselves and with the issue. But others voted for it because they just feared that if they voted against it, they would pay a bigger political price back home than if they uh voted for it. So I think as we continue to grow the strength of the anti-gun violence movement politically, we'll have a chance to build on the 2022 bill. I do think it, you know, it takes a Democratic Congress. So we will ha we passed that bill in 2022 because we had Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate, and a Democratic president. So it's still likely that the only way you can make progress on this issue is to have Democrats in charge of the Congress and the presidency. Um, but I think that that's you know likely going to be where we sit after Trump is done. And I think we'll have another chance to make some progress.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

One of the major issues, and and really is it's sort of at the center of this podcast, is the fact that people don't tend to believe good news. They don't, they don't have a good perception of what's happening in terms of crime and gun violence reduction and things like that. It have you thought about are there ways to better communicate that from sort of this high perch that you sit on that can help people understand that yet the issue's not done. We're not, we haven't solved these problems, but they are improving and these things are working. How do you go about doing that?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Yeah, what a what an important question, but a really big question. And I'm you know deeply grateful, Jeff, for the work that you have done to tell this story of what has happened since 2022. I mean, I still go into very, you know, highly politic politically educated audiences who are surprised to learn at the massive declines that we have seen in gun violence since 2022 and across the board, right? You know, mass shootings, homicides, um, school shootings. Uh so part of it is that we just have to repeat it. Uh, we are just not good at telling good news. Um so I'd love it if all of my colleagues that supported that bill um told that story. Um, but uh and and I'll try to say very little about this, but just to tease the topic. Um, you know, the reason that people don't know that all this progress has happened is that the other side is trying to constantly make people scared, scared of their neighbors, scared of immigrants, um, scared of people with different skin color than them. And they use crime as the mechanism to do that. It's a it's a tactic that works. And so, you know, all they have to do is talk about, you know, one particular gruesome crime, and people assume that that's what's happening everywhere. Because we live in a country where scare tactics work, because we live in a country where people are deeply anxious. Um, it's a it's a it's an economy and a culture of scarcity today, where people feel like they have no hope, no upward economic mobility, they have a harder time finding meaning and purpose and connection in their lives, because we've structured an economy and a culture that is really cold and consolidates power in the handful of a few number of people, and you can work full-time and still not get ahead, which makes you even more anxious and makes you looking over your shoulder to try to understand who's to blame for the situation you're in. So I think we've got to build a common good economy. I think we've got to build a culture in which we care about each other and we have more opportunities for a meaningful connection with each other. We still have to build a healthier economy and a healthier culture where people just wake up every day a little bit happier than they are today. And if we do that, then the politics of demagoguery and scare tactics won't work as well. And and if and if that's a a tactic that doesn't work as well for the right, then people will be more willing to believe the the actual data, the actual truth that they are very, very unlikely to be the subjects of uh incident of gun violence, less likely today than you know, ever before in the last decade. But I think that's a tough message right now where everybody feels so on edge and is willing to believe the worst about um the intent of their neighbors.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Aaron Powell And sort of looking at it from the totally opposite side, at some point this historic decline will stop. Hopefully it doesn't, we don't see an increase. But at some point, somewhere, crime will will go up from this low level. Is there a responsible way to capture the dynamic? We see this a lot, especially in 2020, it felt like from the left, there was a lot of yes, murder's rising, but it's low, or sort of minimizing that this is a big problem that people sometimes are rightfully scared of crime while not automatically going to the, you know, we the only solution is tough on crime. We have to be tough on this problem. We need to incarcerate our way out of this. Uh is there a middle ground to acknowledge this problem while not immediately trying to go to the right as far as possible on the toughness of this issue?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Well, I mean, query why um Democrats, the left, have made crime and gun violence two separate issues. Um why don't why aren't they the same issue? When when we talk about crime, why aren't we talking about gun violence and the responses to gun violence? Because that's the the crime that people are most fearful of. When people really talk about crime, they are broadly talking about violent crime. And when you're talking about violent crime, you're really talking about a lot of gun violence. So I think it's strange that our party, you know, talks about gun violence as one issue and crime as another issue, which forces us sometimes to find the solutions for high crime in a basket of policy ideas that doesn't include changes in our gun laws, because changes in our gun laws are in the gun violence basket. So if we want to get serious on crime, we have to get guns out of the hands of dangerous people. And if a Republican says they care about crime, but doesn't want to change the gun laws, then they don't care about crime. And we've got to label people who say they care about crime, but want to make it easy for bad people to get guns as illegitimate and insincere.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Last question, last general direction I kind of want to talk about, because this is an issue that's been on my mind a lot, is there a role for AI to play in this debate or in the gun violence reduction, criminal justice reform process and to actually play a role, but to do it responsibly and take advantage of technology while also acknowledging sort of the limitations of the technology?

SPEAKER_01 14:39

I don't know. I mean, I think there's going to be a lot of downsides uh to how AI could be deployed in this fight. I'm sure there are upsides. Obviously, you know, there's been a lot of good efforts to try to map gun violence, um, to try to understand the places where you need to deploy resources as we're trying to figure out which interventions with at-risk young people works. AI can probably help us get good data. But AI could also facilitate dangerous profiling of individuals who really aren't a threat, but AI may deem a threat. AI has biases that are inherent in it. Uh, and I don't want to step into a world in which AI, some machine, is making the decision about who's dangerous and who's not. I also think when I talked about that spiritual disintegration that's happening in this country that facilitates this constant state of fear that Trump and Republicans want us to be in, I think AI and technology has a lot to do with that. Uh I mean, I think people are lonelier than ever before, in part because of their addiction to technology. And when people get lonely, they first get sad and then they get angry. Um, a lot of the people who were marching on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, I think were deeply lonely people. Um, if you study, you know, these mass shooters, they are almost routinely deeply isolated, lonely individuals, uh, many of which spiraled into a violent dissent because of their relationship with technology. So I am very skeptical that right now AI is on a trajectory to be a net good for this country, at least in the short run, which is why I think you've got to be very careful about kids' access to AI and kids' access to these friendship bots, um, so that you can try to push our activity on artificial intelligence into the places where it could unquestionably create some good, like in helping to study which intervention programs work and which ones don't work.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Well, I really appreciate it. What what is next for you?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Well, uh, we just had a very late night in the uh uh in the Senate, um, as Republicans are trying to fund the Department of Homeland Security without any uh any serious reforms. Uh so um we're right now in the middle of that effort uh trying to um make sure that if we're funding the government, we're funding a lawful government, a government that obeys the laws. So that's the fight that we just uh took a pause in late last uh last night, uh heading into Thursday.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

All right, great. Well, thank you so much for joining the program. I really appreciate it. Uh best of luck to you. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for everything you do. Thanks for listening to the Jeffalytics Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and to learn more, head on over to ahdatalytics.com for more information and previous episodes. If you like what you heard, please leave a glowing review, which will help others to discover the show. Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.