In wake of mass shootings, Dem senator wages filibuster

Sen. Chris Murphy is holding up action in the Senate floor, demanding that Republicans allow votes on those measures.

Murphy now holds the record for the eighth-longest talking filibuster in Senate history, during which he could not eat or take a bathroom break.

Senate Democrats ended a almost 15-hour filibuster early Thursday after Republican Party leaders reportedly agreed to allow votes on two proposed gun control measures.

And he wrapped up the filibuster on a grave note from his home state – a reminder of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012.

The Senate will vote on a measure banning gun sales to people on the terrorist watch list and a provision requiring background checks at shows and over the internet.

Murphy said he thinks, this time, these laws might actually pass even though they did not after Sandy Hook and several other mass shootings since then.

Murphy said he opposes Cornyn’s alternative, which would give the Justice Department a 72-hour timeline to go through the court system to bar a gun sale.

Versions of the two amendments Democrats hope to pass were given Senate votes in December, after the deadly shooting in San Bernardino, California.

Republicans are also expected to put forth their own proposals, so both sides could be far apart on actually reaching a deal.

“There is an open question as to whether the legislation that Senator (Dianne) Feinstein is proposing would have stopped (the Orlando shooter) from getting a weapon, because it actually gives some broader discretions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to put on the list of people who can’t buy guys, individuals that they believe pose a risk to national security”, he said. Prosecutors would have to persuade a judge to block the transaction permanently, a bar Democrats and gun control activists say is too high.

He said he would speak on the Senate floor until “we get some signal, some sign that we can get a path forward on addressing this epidemic in a meaningful, bipartisan way”. He chastised Democrats for their 15 hours of speeches, calling it a “campaign talkathon”.

But Democratic leaders cautioned against an incremental approach on gun measures – issuing a warning to Cornyn Wednesday.

Murphy – who with his fellow Connecticut Democrat, Sen. David Popp, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Murphy’s effort is interfering with Senate business.

Omar Mateen, the gunman in the Orlando shooting, had at one point been on a watch list of suspected terrorists but was taken off before the shooting.

Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins voted with her party against Feinstein’s proposal in December because she said it was based on an overly broad “terrorist screening database”.

The last major gun control measure was a ban in 1994 on semi-automatic assault weapons such as the one used in Orlando on Sunday. Paul Ryan, the House of Representatives speaker, injected a note of caution at his weekly news conference.

“When it comes to our response to the tragedy in Orlando, we are already beginning to see the splintering of America”, said Sen.