Consider This from NPR - Not Much Changed After Sandy Hook. Will Federal Laws Change After Uvalde?

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

At least 19 children were shot and killed by a man who investigators say was armed with assault rifles legally purchased after his 18th birthday. It was the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut nearly 10 years ago. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tells NPR that lawmakers in Washington — including himself — bear responsibility for inaction on gun violence over the last decade. Also in this episode, gun control activist Sandy Phillips, who spoke to NPR's Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition; and Uvalde City Manager Vince DiPiazza, who spoke to NPR's Leila Fadel on Morning Edition. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Nineteen children, two adults, shot and killed inside Robb Elementary School. As unthinkable as it is, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District had planned for something like this. Ever since Sandy Hook, so many schools have. In Uvalde, the district has its own police force, a chief, and four officers. A 21-point fact sheet on the district website describes school campuses with perimeter fencing, security

cameras, motion detectors, and alarm systems, portable metal detectors, security vestibules, and door buzz-in systems. There's student and staff training drills, a bullying reporting system, a threat reporting system, and a policy that classroom doors remain closed and locked at all times. What's more, in Texas, a 2019 law allows school districts to place as many armed teachers or school personnel on campus as they see fit. No matter how schools prepare, calls for lawmakers to do more are coming yet again. You're out of line and an embarrassment. Hey, sit down and don't play this. The next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing. On Wednesday, former Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who is challenging Republican Governor Greg Abbott for his seat,

interrupted an afternoon press conference by state and local leaders. This is totally predictable. Sir, you're out of line. Sir, you're out of line. O'Rourke was escorted out, and Abbott said this. We need all Texans to, in this one moment in time, put aside personal agendas, think of somebody other than ourselves, think about the people who were hurt, and help those who have been hurt. That's in Texas.

And in Washington, there's been intense focus on what, if anything, the federal government will do. What are we doing? Days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African-American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands. What are we doing? Democratic Senator Chris Murphy spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday. Murphy represents Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook school shooting took place in December of 2012. On that day, a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.

This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day. Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids, as I have had to do, about why they got locked into a bathroom and told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America. And it is a choice. Consider this. America's school districts can only do so much. In the nearly 10 years since Sandy Hook, what have lawmakers in Washington done to pass, in their words, common sense gun control? The answer is not much at all. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Wednesday, May 25th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Sandy Phillips was in Buffalo when she heard the news. I was having lunch here in Buffalo and I got a phone call telling me what was going on and I almost collapsed because it's just, I want to say it's unbelievable, but it's not. It's predictable and it's preventable. Phillips's daughter, Jessie, was killed in a mass shooting in a movie theater, the one in Aurora, Colorado, in the summer of 2012. Since then, Sandy and her husband have been traveling the country in an RV, going from shooting to shooting, trying to console victims' families and advocate for gun control.

And we were on a tour to hit 20 states and 22 cities, and Buffalo happened, so we got detoured once. And now Uvalde, so we're being detoured again. But we cannot not go and hold the hands and the broken hearts of fellow survivors across our country. Phillips is now heading from Buffalo to Uvalde, and she told NPR she already knows how the families there feel. They want to die right now. They don't want to take another breath. And when we go in and we actually meet with these people, we let them know that we felt the same way. I tell them that if I'd had a gun in the house, I probably would not be here today. But we did survive, and we did find joy again, and we still miss our daughter, and always will.

And our lives will never be the same and neither will theirs. From here on out, I mean, this is, excuse me, this is a changed community, I believe. Unfortunately, we're now a member of a club which is not as exclusive as you might think. Uvalde's city manager, Vince DiPiazza, told NPR he's heard from people all over the country who've gone through what Uvalde's going through now. His small community of 16,000 people is reeling. Families are connected. They know each other. The victim list is going to reach into all segments of the population here, in one form or another. I don't know how you get over anything like this. As a nation, we have to ask, when in God's name

are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God's name we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done? President Biden addressed the nation Tuesday night, when he also invoked the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Since then, he said there have been more than 900 incidents of gunfire reported on American school grounds. Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God's name is our backbone? To have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies.

It's time to turn this pain into action for every parent, for every citizen of this country. We have to make it clear to every elected official in this country, it's time to act. So what action is possible at the federal level, especially when some states have laws that make gun access easier? In Texas, for instance, anyone who's 18 can walk into a gun store and buy an assault rifle. That's what the Uvalde shooter reportedly did shortly after his birthday. I have no idea really what to tell these parents. I have no idea.

I have a feeling there's zero words that brings comfort to a mom or a dad who have lost their child. But I also want them to know that there are people here in Washington who are going to try to honor the memory of these kids with action. That's Senator Chris Murphy. You heard him speaking on the Senate floor earlier. And the day after those remarks, he spoke to NPR about what, if anything, could possibly change. He spoke to my co-host Elsa Chang. As someone who was so close to what happened at Sandy Hook, what are these moments now, like what happened yesterday, what are they like for you when they happen? Well, I mean, the first thing I think about is those families in Sandy Hook who relive their nightmare every time that one of these mass shootings happens, in particular, shooting in a school.

And having been there at the emergency location site at Sandy Hook that day, I know what last night looked like. I know how grisly that is, the process of identifying these bodies. These kids don't have IDs on them, and so it's their parents who have to identify their children. I also know what an AR-15 does to the bodies of these children. Many of them were probably not recognizable. And I know this is so hard to hear, and it's hard for me to say, but this country has to sort of come to grips with the reality of what these mass shootings look like. It was Emmett Till's open casket that changed the civil rights debate. And I hope that we don't have to show Americans what these kids' bodies look like, who get shot by semi-automatic weapons in order to change public opinion here. But I can't imagine

what those families are going through. And the Sandy Hook families are going through a lot today as well. Yeah. Well, when it comes to coming to grips with reality, I covered the efforts to pass gun control legislation back in 2013, shortly after Sandy Hook. And I remember there was a palpable feeling inside the Capitol among Democrats that if there was ever a time when new gun control bills would get passed, it would be at that moment after the murder of 20 young children. That hope was so strong when I talked to you and your Democratic colleagues back then, and yet the efforts failed. So let me ask you, how do you even meaningfully revive the gun control conversation inside the Senate after that?

I think I came to understand that there are very few epiphanies. There are very few moments where a right turn happens in American politics. It's really about political power. How much do you have? How much does the other side have? In 2013, the modern anti-gun violence movement didn't exist. All these groups that we think about today from March for Our Lives to Gabby Gifford's group, Moms Demand Action, they didn't exist. All these groups that we think about today from March for Our Lives to Gabby Giffords' group, Moms Demand Action, they didn't exist. But the gun lobby did, the NRA did, and they just were more powerful than we were in 2013. So what we've been doing for the last 10 years is building up our own power. We're a significant political organization. The NRA is

weaker today than they were. And maybe that balance of power, political power today, much more even than it was in 2013, will allow us to get something done. That's my task over the next few days. Do you really believe that? What are your conversations like now with your colleagues who don't support gun control legislation? What are they saying to you right now? Well, you know, they trot out all the same tropes, you know, first that this is a mental illness problem, not a gun problem. Second, that, you know, we can solve this by putting more weapons in our schools. You know, we've got to, you know, pop holes in those mythologies. Obviously, we have no more mental illness than any other country in the world, but we have all

the mass shootings. And there were plenty of people with guns at that school. They couldn't stop this guy. So they come up with all sorts of other things that we should be working on. And I admit, there's a really narrow path to getting 60 votes in the Senate right now. And maybe I'm a fool for being the eternal optimist, but I'm just going to stay at it for these next few days, the next week. So you do think that you will be able to garner some support from the other side in the next few weeks? You really think that something will change? So as we're talking, we're trying to figure out a process by which over the next week, Republicans and Democrats, a group of us can sit down and try to hammer out a compromise. I will tell you, I think the chances are, you know, well less than 50-50 that we will find

that compromise, because there are probably four or five Republicans who would fairly easily support some common sense measures. Tougher to find the next five that would get you to 60. But we're going to give it a shot. And if we can't find that compromise, then I think we should just take a vote. Let's take a vote on something like a commercial background checks bill. Right. And put people on the record and campaign against them. Yes, we've seen this over and over again. I'm hearing Democrats, not just you, but lots of Democrats blame Republicans. But, you know, this morning, my colleague Layla Fadl spoke with David Hogg,

who survived the Parkland shooting. He has since become a gun control activist, and he doesn't see this as just a problem with Republicans. Both Democrats and Republicans, I personally believe, I think both are complacent. You know, both have been empowered in the wake of these mass shootings, and both have failed to pass any gun law at the federal level in years. Is David Hogg right? Have Democrats become complacent? You know, I talked to David earlier today. He's a great friend. And listen, I own this, right?

I mean, I own the failure of Congress to pass common sense gun legislation. Yes, it's a problem almost exclusively of Republicans. But I get it. We're in charge. I know that I'm a leader on this fight. And I understand why folks are frustrated at both Democrats and Republicans. The truth of the matter is, if there were more Democrats here and less Republicans, we would be able to pass this legislation. If voters went to the polls and decided not to keep reelecting people who don't support universal background checks, we could solve this issue pretty easily. So in the end, this is Congress's responsibility, but it is also the voters' responsibility.

Okay. But apart from waiting for the next election, what can you do at this point? Like in an interview with the New York Times last week, you talked about the possibility of a dedicated office within the White House that's focused on gun control. But what difference will that make when the numbers in the Senate are basically the same? So we're exploring what the ground is for compromise right now, perhaps red flag legislation at a national level, perhaps a smaller expansion of the background check system that would get more sales, but not all sales, checked for people's criminal and mental health history. You know, those are the places where we might be able to get some compromise. I get it that that's not enough, but maybe we can show some progress here and we'll try to figure that out in the coming days.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. in the coming days.