Sen. Chris Murphy Lays Waste To The NRA’s False Choice On Guns

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) debunked the NRA’s false choice argument that we can either work on mental health treatment or ban assault weapons.

Video:

Murphy said on CNN’s State Of The Union, “There’s this false construct created either you have to work on mental health, or you have to focus on strengthening our gun laws. That’s not true. You need to do all of it. We need to be working to identify kids like Adam Lanzer earlier in getting them help; you need to acknowledge that those kids with that profile exist in every single country around the world. It’s only here that those kids turn to a weapon of mass destruction in order to deal with their demons. So you have to do both.”

Chris Murphy pointed out the NRA false choice on guns

The NRA wants to force the gun debate to be a very narrow black and white question. Do you work on mental health or banning assault weapons? The NRA is the gun lobby, and they exist only to sell more guns, so it is to the benefit of gun makers if the discussion centers around mental health. It is possible to both discuss mental health and the role of a very narrow and specific class of weapon in these shootings.

One of the reasons why the government is broken under Republican control is that they have turned everything into a one-way policymaking highway. There is no more discussion about doing two policy tracks at once. Everything is an A or B choice.

The argument that the NRA is making is based on a bogus premise. It is possible to both improve the system to identify and treat potential mass shooters, while also making it difficult or impossible for them to obtain assault weapons.

As Murphy showed, the way to win the discussion on gun violence is to not accept the gun lobby’s framing of the issue.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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