Meet the man who sparked the Democratic revolt on guns

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) was at his college reunion in Massachusetts when he heard the devastating death toll from Orlando. Forty-nine people.

He recalled immediately dreading the moments of silence, the calls to action and the “thoughts and prayers” he knew would follow, and decided then he wouldn’t let the nation’s deadliest mass shooting pass by without a real debate in Congress.

{mosads}“I just couldn’t do it again. I just couldn’t live through that same script again,” Murphy said.

Three days later, Murphy launched a 15-hour filibuster that spurred an emotional debate on gun laws in both chambers of Congress — and nationwide — for nearly 10 days.

House Democrats said Murphy’s move directly led to their unprecedented 25-hour “sit-in” protest that included 170 members — a show of support from the party for gun control that would have been unimaginable even before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

Days after Murphy’s stand, GOP leaders agreed to hold votes on bills to prevent suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms. One of those bills, a compromise from a moderate Republican, earned support from eight Republicans from states like Arizona, Tennessee and South Carolina. 

That bill is still alive — for now. But Murphy said there’s a slim chance it will clear its next hurdle, which will require 60 votes.

“It’s certainly hard to see how we get six more votes,” Murphy said in an interview with The Hill on Friday. “We’re probably getting to the point where we have to bring this issue to the November election.”

Still, the first-term senator believes he’s turning the tide. 

This week, eight Republicans broke ranks with the National Rifle Association on a gun vote — twice as many GOP lawmakers who were willing to do so during the charged battle over background checks in 2013.

“I have a sense that five years from now we’re going to look back at the past 10 days as a watershed moment in the history of the anti-gun violence moment,” Murphy said.

Murphy first mentioned his filibuster idea to friend and colleague Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who told him to pitch it at their caucus meeting that night. Then he quietly began calling senators whose gun amendments he wanted to revive on the floor, including Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

He stopped eating or drinking around 7 a.m. on Wednesday to prepare, though it wasn’t until about 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday — an hour before the start of his filibuster — that Democratic leaders confirmed his plan.

Murphy’s filibuster even surprised some of his closest allies on gun violence.

Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.), who won Murphy’s seat representing Newtown just weeks before the Sandy Hook shooting, had just finished delivering her own speech on gun violence when she looked up to C-SPAN. 

“I said, ‘Oh, look there’s Chris!’” Esty recalled in an interview Friday. Her and her staff quickly began compiling a package of his favorite snacks for when he finished: Diet Mountain Dew, Doritos, Big Bites hot dogs, Red Bull and an apple, “for good measure.”

Esty, who lives about 40 minutes from Newtown, already known Murphy for decades before they found themselves standing in the firehouse outside Sandy Hook School where dozens of families first learned their children, wives, or daughters had been killed.

She helped him in his first bid for Congress in 2005, when she was a town council member. Her daughter later worked for his Senate campaign. The two still live two blocks away from each other in Cheshire, Conn.  

In the weeks following the Newtown shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, Esty didn’t yet have a staff and Murphy didn’t yet have a permanent office in the Senate. When his staff first began meeting with gun groups the weeks after the shooting, they would gather in a spare room in the basement bellows of the Russell Office Building, a member of group recalled. 

For four years, the coalition of Connecticut lawmakers and gun control advocates born out of Newtown saw no hope in Congress. There were no votes, no hearings. Many national advocates turned their attention entirely to the states, where lawmakers passed 39 new gun restrictions, including many in Connecticut.

After Murphy’s filibuster drew front-page coverage and nonstop cable news attention, the idea of making a statement caught on among supporters in the House.

Democrats began holding phone calls and meetings — leaving out leadership, because their ideas were flagrant violations of the rules — and ultimately decided to hold a protest “sit-in” led by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

Esty learned about the cemented plan Wednesday morning, after running into another leader of the group who was also a Connecticut colleague, Rep. John Larson. He told her the plan was to “be disrupting.”

Twenty-five and a half hours later, she said she regretted her decision to wear a skirt, instead of pants, and to not bring her own sleeping bag and toothbrush.

Most strikingly, she said she counted the number of Democratic faces who had turned her down three years earlier on her background checks bill after Newtown.  

“They had absolutely refused, they said, ‘I can’t, I won’t.’” Esty said. “It was people who three years ago, wouldn’t get anywhere near the subject. That’s what makes me much more optimistic.”

Several days later — and with no path for action on gun legislation this Congress — Murphy, Esty and their supporters are still excited about their late-night plays, which they see as a reawakening of their cause despite the still long odds.

One of the moms who lost her son in Sandy Hook, Nicole Hockley, had jumped on a plane to support the House’s “sit-in.” 

Some supporters, like Christian Heyne of the Coalition Against Gun Violence, said it was their first time returning to the Senate gallery since their doomed background checks vote in 2017. Until now, Heyne — whose mother was killed in a shooting   said he “didn’t have the stomach for it.” 

“It has been difficult over last three years to point to anything in Congress frankly, until this past week,” added Colin Goddard, a gun control advocate for Everytown for Gun Safety who survived a bullet during the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007.

“We’ve never seen a good filibuster, we’ve never seen a sit-in.  All of this can be attributed to Sen. Murphy,” he added.