Senator Chris Murphy’s talking filibuster to stop gun violence enters its fourteenth hour

Ear­ly this morn­ing, at 8:21 AM Pacif­ic Time, Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Sen­a­tor Chris Mur­phy of Con­necti­cut took to the Sen­ate floor to call for action to address gun vio­lence. But instead of mere­ly giv­ing a short speech and then yield­ing the floor, Mur­phy coura­geous­ly began what has now turned into the eighth longest “talk­ing fil­i­buster” in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, demand­ing that the cham­ber act to address the nation’s gun vio­lence epidemic.

Joined by most of his col­leagues in the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus over the course of the morn­ing, after­noon, evening, and then night, Mur­phy took ques­tions and com­ments from col­leagues, but did not relin­quish the floor.

He has now been on his feet for over four­teen hours.

“Our heart breaks col­lec­tive­ly in this coun­try for the cit­i­zens of Orlan­do and as I’ll speak in a moment, in par­tic­u­lar in Con­necti­cut,” said Mur­phy as he began his his­toric, inspir­ing fil­i­buster. (See his open­ing remarks on video here.)

“Our heart breaks for the peo­ple of Orlan­do because we know in a very real way the pain that exists there today, but we also know how that pain is real­ly nev­er end­ing, how the rip­ples of that pain are unceas­ing and unre­lent­ing and they span gen­er­a­tions. They span neigh­bor­hoods. They span years. New­town is still putting itself back togeth­er, prob­a­bly will be for a long time, and Orlan­do the same.”

“I don’t think that we should pro­ceed with debate on amend­ments to this [Com­merce, Sci­ence, Jus­tice, and Relat­ed Agen­cies Appro­pri­a­tions] bill until we have fig­ured out a way to come togeth­er on, at the very least, two sim­ple ideas that enjoy the sup­port of 80% to 90% of Amer­i­cans,” Mur­phy declared.

“Two ideas, two pieces of leg­is­la­tion that would have been poten­tial­ly impact­ful with respect to the case in Orlan­do. That is one piece of leg­is­la­tion that Sen­a­tor Fein­stein has intro­duced that would sim­ply say that if you are on a ter­ror watch list, that you should­n’t be able to buy a weapon. Sec­ond, in order to make that pro­tec­tion mean­ing­ful, you also need to make sure that when­ev­er a would-be shoot­er buys a gun, he goes through a back­ground check.”

“I’m going to remain on this floor until we get some sig­nal, some sign that we can come togeth­er on these two mea­sures, that we can get a path for­ward on address­ing this epi­dem­ic in a mean­ing­ful bipar­ti­san way,” Mur­phy added.

Min­utes ago, after hours of tak­ing ques­tions from fel­low Democ­rats and remain­ing on his feet on the Sen­ate floor, Mur­phy announced that he had received word that Mitch McConnell and Har­ry Reid had been in dis­cus­sions about sched­ul­ing a vote on address­ing gun vio­lence. Exact­ly what kind of com­mit­ment McConnell made with respect to hold­ing a vote was not described, but Mur­phy sound­ed an opti­mistic note as he sum­ma­rized the infor­ma­tion that he had received.

“If you’re turn­ing in for the night, here’s the game plan: We need a vote tomor­row on gun safe­ty, and we need to win that vote. Stay tuned!” tweet­ed Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus staff.

Mur­phy’s fil­i­buster has become a top trend­ing top­ic on Twit­ter; the com­pa­ny even released a map show­ing where the tweets are com­ing from.

POSTSCRIPT: Chris Mur­phy has yield­ed the floor as of 2:12 AM Eastern/11:12 PM Pacif­ic Time. His talk­ing fil­i­buster stands as the eighth longest in Sen­ate history.

Mur­phy end­ed his fil­i­buster by ask­ing every­one to remem­ber Dylan Christo­pher Jack Hock­ley and his teacher Anne Marie Mur­phy, who per­ished in the mas­sacre at Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary in New­town, Con­necti­cut. Hock­ley and Mur­phy were lat­er found togeth­er by the police who had to clear the awful crime scene.

As Tom Cleary report­ed on Decem­ber 17th, 2012:

Dylan Hock­ley died in Anne Marie Mur­phy’s arms

Star­ing down the bar­rel of a rifle, Anne Marie Mur­phy pulled Dylan Hock­ley close to her, try­ing to shield him from the hail of bul­lets that would kill them both.

Dylan, 6, had spe­cial needs, his fam­i­ly said Mon­day. And Mur­phy was his “amaz­ing” aide, they said. He loved her, point­ing hap­pi­ly to her pho­to on the Hock­ley’s refrig­er­a­tor every day.

“We take great com­fort in know­ing that Dylan was not alone when he died,” said his par­ents, Ian and Nicole Hockley.

We have lost enough lives in this coun­try to gun vio­lence. Con­gress should have act­ed after New­town, and Auro­ra, and Fort Hood, and all the oth­er tragedies of years past, but it did­n’t. Con­gress has failed us too many times.

We’re incred­i­bly grate­ful to Sen­a­tor Chris Mur­phy for rec­og­niz­ing this, say­ing so, and hold­ing the floor of the Sen­ate for more than four­teen hours straight to demand that our nation’s law­mak­ers do more than sim­ply observe anoth­er point­less moment of silence in the wake of anoth­er massacre.