♪ ♪ WARREN: Thank you everyone for joining us tonight on Politics and Prose Live, where we're here tonight with Senator Chris Murphy, Representative Gabby Giffords and Peter Ambler to discuss "The Violence Inside Us," which explores America's violent history and our obsession with firearms.

Joining the center tonight will be former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the co-founder of the organization Gifford's, which has led the fight for gun safety and also be joined by Gifford's co-founder and Executive Director, Peter Ambler.

Now please welcome our guests to Politics and Prose Live.

AMBLER: I've got my book right here, um, Politics and Prose already plied, and you can see it's like dog-eared and book marked it's it's-it's worth really diving into.

It's a fantastic read.

I'm so honored and excited to be able to talk with all of you about it today.

Um, and, but, you know, like just let's start things off casual, um, Gabby, you know, your fortitude is legendary and this is a challenging time for all Americans.

Um, you know, with the various, uh, the multitude of challenges we face from COVID to the fight for racial equity and justice.

So it's now these horrible wildfires in the West coast, but how do you, how do you, um, you know, stay busy?

How do you stay sane?

How do you, uh, you know, um, stay, well, whatcha been up to?

GIFFORDS: Um, I'm so busy.

Lot of Zoom calls, work, work, work, um, um, constant therapy, um, yoga twice a week, French horn, Spanish lessons and riding my bike.

I'm walking on my treadmill, watching movies it's Groundhog Day.

AMBLER: Um, Senator Murphy, let me bring you into the conversation.

Um, and I'll start with an easy one.

You and Gabby actually joined our Congress in the same year.

You were, uh, classmates.

Um, well, why don't we start with just, um, what was she like back then?

Like, well, what was it like working with Gabby Giffords?

Um, early in 2007?

MURPHY: I don't think she was playing the French horn back then, were you Gabby?

GIFFORDS: Yes.

No, no, no, no.

MURPHY: We talked a lot during... GIFFORDS: Yeah.

MURPHY: You know what I remember Gabby.

I remember that you were one of the people on our side of the aisle who had the best relationship with Republicans.

You had a lot of Republican friends, right?

GIFFORDS: Yes.

MURPHY: And that's, I think the magic of the conversation we'll have today is that, you know, we have an opportunity get Republicans to support the things that you and I support because they do support background checks.

Right.

They do support making sure that, you know, guns are safely stored.

And I remember during that time that you were just very committed to making sure that you were able to do things in a bipartisan way, and that can be the future of guns, right?

That's can be the future of background check, right?

GIFFORDS: Yes.

Ted Poe.

MURPHY: Yup.

Like Ted Poe... GIFFORDS: Yes.

MURPHY: One of the most conservative members of the House of Representatives and Gabby you worked together on you would never suspect it.

Remember Ted Poe would give these, you know, would give these crazy one minute speeches.

GIFFORDS: Yes.

AMBLER: "And that's, that's the way it is."

MURPHY: Just right.

Every one would end with this, "And that's the way it is."

And Gabby and he were able to work together.

And that's my hope here and Gabby is, in your organization, which obviously is trying to get the best result possible, but also not giving up on Republicans and gun owners, you know, come with us in the end, but that eventually can, um, can be our success is not winning this only Democratic votes, but getting Republicans to join us.

GIFFORDS: Yes.

AMBLER: Now, Senator you write in the book how fundamentally, it's the Sandy Hook shooting that really brought you into this.

And we'll talk more about that later.

Um, and the same is true by the way, for Gabby, for me, despite the fact that, you know, she was shot on January 8th, 2011, um, it was ultimately about two years later, the shooting in Sandy Hook that catalyzed the formation of Giffords and launched Gabby as a national leader on this issue.

But my question, my question to you is like, like, um, you know, Sandy Hook would have then been, you know, probably the second time when you received devastating news about gun violence and maybe the first was when Gabby herself was shot.

Um, so can you just sort of bring us back to, um, when, when that happened and your response to that and, you know, fast forward to today, um, you know, life takes exceptional turns and, um, speak to this idea that, you know, the woman that you were once neighbors with on the fifth floor of Cannon, you're now, you know, joined in this, uh, fight for safer gun laws in a different way.

MURPHY: Well, all of Gabby's friends remember exactly where we were when we heard that news.

I remember that I was standing in my kitchen and looking across at, the TV, uh, that morning when we received the news of what had happened.

And, um, we are just so thrilled that Gabby is here with us now as an advocate, um, because we weren't sure that day, that-that was the direction this would head.

Um, and, um, it was just, um, amazing, um, to, to then get the chance to stand side by side with her, um, and with the organization after Sandy Hook.

Um, you're right.

Uh, you know, Sandy Hook was sort of the second moment of horrific news for me.

Um, but just like Gabby never expected to be in the position that she's in, even as a legislator, you never expect to be the one where it happens in your state or your district.

You think you're just going to watch this on TV.

And then all of a sudden it was happening, you know, not only in Connecticut, but it was happening, you know, at a school with kids who were the same age as my kids and parents who were the same age as me.

And so it very quickly became personal.

And, you know, I tell in this book, the story of how I think I really need to make up for lost time, because I should have been working on this issue long before, but we are now building this political movement that is unbeatable.

And I just sort of marvel at my friend, Gabby, who was still and still is she just said, she's spending her days now in therapy.

She was in even sort of more intensive therapy back in 2012.

And yet she decided, you decided Gabby, to stand up one of the most powerful organizations of this movement.

I just think that that's, that's an amazing level of courage.

It's hard to fathom in the middle of your recovery.

You decide that you are going to create a massive political organization to try to stop gun violence.

And we're all just very, very grateful.

GIFFORDS: Thank you very much.

Thank you.

AMBLER: So grateful, Gabby, uh, speaking of your recovery, you've now spoken at three straight Democratic National Conventions.

Um, you are sort of like a surprise guest in 2012 when you led the Pledge of Allegiance and then you spoke at the next two.

And I don't know, I thought you really personally stole the show, um, this past month virtually in Milwaukee.

Um, but I, I was, I was hoping that you might sort of share some of that wisdom.

Some of those words with the guests here at Politics and Prose, um, you know, before we launch into the rest of this conversation.

GIFFORDS: I've known the darkest of days.

Days of pain, and uncertain recovery, but confronted by despair I've summoned hope, confronted by paralysis and aphasia, I responded with grit and determination.

I put one foot in front of the other.

I found one word, and then I found another.

My recovery is a daily fight, but fighting makes me stronger.

Words once came easily, today I struggle to speak, but I've not lost my voice.

America needs all of us to speak out.

Even when you have to fight to find the words.

I'm also in a second fight, the fight to stop gun violence.

It's also a fight forged by tragedy and pain.

A fight then can change lives.

We are at a crossroads.

We can let the shooting continue, or we can act, we can protect our family, our future.

We can vote.

We can be on the right side of history.

Please join us in this fight.

Vote, vote, vote.

Thank you very much.

AMBLER: Thank you so much, Gabby.

Um, I know you only have a certain amount of time with us because, um, there's, there's a, there's a future US Senator that I think you need to go spend time with this evening, but, um, uh, we're just so fortunate you were able to join us here with, uh, Senator Murphy and Politics and Prose talking about the 'Violence Inside of Us' or 'Inside Us'.

Um, but you know, Senator, any, I think, you know, as, as Gabby leaves, um, you know, what she sort of draws out in that speech is this metaphor between, um, on one hand her recovery and how slow and arduous, but yet ultimately significant it is and the gun violence prevention movement.

Um, so why don't we start with, you know, there's, I don't think anybody in the country that has a clearer view of, um, you know, the fight at hand, what we've achieved and what we've yet to achieve.

Uh, so what, what is your, um, you know, viewpoint of where we succeeded as a gun violence prevention movement and where we still have to go?

MURPHY: Great.

Well, let me say, I know Gabby is going to have to leave and I'll say goodbye.

Um, uh, you, you mentioned, maybe not everybody knows, but Gabby's husband is running for Senate.

Uh, and I first met him as Gabby's, uh, partner, uh, playing poker with him late at night, uh, at our first, uh, orientation as new members.

And so, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be playing poker with you, uh, at Senate orientation in the future.

So, uh, thank you, Gabby for joining us.

GIFFORDS: Well thank you very much.

Thank you.

MURPHY: Um, but Peter, um, you know, I think Gabby's analogy is really apt, because the speech that I give to advocates all the time which I include in his book is one that goes something like this.

I say, listen, the great social change movement in the history of this country, the ones that you read about in history books, are not the ones that succeed overnight.

They're the, not the ones, um, that, uh, meet with obstacles and then disappear, give up.

Right, great social change movements are the ones that hit obstacle after obstacle, after failure, after failure and still fight and continue the cause.

And don't give up, that they continue.

And that is the miracle of the gun violence movement.

There are so many people after Sandy Hook, who would, you know, said, um, if Sandy Hook didn't change, everything, nothing will, right.

There are a lot of people that just said after the failure of the background checks bill in 2013, we should all give up, because if the world is willing to tolerate 20 dead first-graders, then what could change?

But that's just a misunderstanding of how politics works, right?

Politics doesn't turn on these sort of moments of epiphany, politics turns after you take the time to build up political power.

And the NRA has spent, you know, 40 years building up political power, right?

Well, the story in his book of how the NRA went from being a sleepy marksmanship organization that wrote some of the nation's first gun control laws to becoming the brook no compromise political juggernaut, that it was in 2013, but we needed time.

And frankly, it's miraculous that after only seven years, we've gotten strong enough that we're regularly beating the NRA.

We wiped out 30-some odd, A-rated NRA members of Congress with your help in 2018.

And we're on the verge of electing a pro-background checks Senate, and a president who will sign the bill, but it takes patience.

And maybe we won't win all of what we want to win in 2021.

In fact, I expect we won't, I expect we'll still have a lot of work left to do, but the great movements in this country are those that never give up, who see the arc of history as long as see their job is to defend it.

Um, so, you know, the end of this book is really about organizations like yours and candidates like Lucy McBath and all of our responsibility to step up.

But the beginning part of the book and we'll get into this, um, is about how well there's an inevitability to violence, right?

That's what the book is called, "The Violence Inside Us".

Um, there is also, um, plenty of evidence over the course of human history and over the course of American history that it's up to us, how much violence we permit, that we're never going to be able to completely squash it.

And in this country, we're probably gonna see more of it than other countries.

Um, but there's plenty of evidence to show that human behavior, actions by government can dramatically reduce levels of violence.

And naturally the story of this book is sort of, to be honest about the parts of the American experience, that aren't inevitable to tell you why that is, but then sort of empower you to understand that it's still in our hands.

AMBLER: Yeah.

So as you said, and as you wrote in the book, America does have a violent history and that is detailed in really fascinating ways, um, in the pages.

Um, but over the, you know, over the past 30 years, violence in this country has declined, but gun violence has remained stubbornly high.

And the NRA has this sort of like if not a gun than a hammer talking point, right.

Which ignores the sort of obvious truth about the lethality of guns and how that drives like our current epidemic of violence in this country.

Um, so I just wondering if you could take that, uh, talking point on head-on, why are guns so dangerous?

MURPHY: So, um, just to go backwards for a second, um, there's this moment in American history where we start to become an outlier of violence, and there's a number of reasons why that pivot point is the 1840s and 1850s.

But one of the reasons why that's the moment at which US violence rates start to spike and they never come back down to earth compared to the rest of the world, is because that is the moment the handgun is invented in the United States and the United States makes the decision, not to control the spread of that gun and all of the guns that come after it.

America's decision is pretty unique.

Uh, other nations decide from the very start they are going to limit the kind of weapons that can be sold and the number of people that can have them, America does not.

Um, and what happens is that these episodes of violence, which used to be a fight or a scuffle, all of a sudden become deadly, the beginning story in the book, which I hope we'll get more in is the story of Shane Oliver, not the story of Sandy Hook is the story of a 20 year old kid who gets killed in Hartford two months before Sandy Hook, a kid who grew up a couple of miles away from me, whose existence growing up in a African-American very poor neighborhood of the north end of Hartford.

Couldn't have been different than mine growing up in a nearby suburb.

And he gets into a fight, an altercation over a girl.

Some kids say some sort of nasty things about his girlfriend, who's with him in the car.

Uh, there's a little bit of a fist fight.

There's an illegal gun sitting in one of these vehicles.

It gets pulled out.

Shane Oliver dies, um 20 years old.

And, and that is the story of American violence.

Um, one historian who does a broad review suggests that American murder rates are twice as high over our long history, simply because of the fact that guns are, ubiquitous, uh, and they fall into the wrong hands and we have too many powerful guns that can kill too many people quickly.

So the book is a story of sort of some inevitable, some inevitability of American violence.

Um, our, our history of violence, our sort of melting pot nature was likely going to create frictions that were going to make us more violent, but we've decided to be twice as violent as we would have been otherwise.

We decided to have homicide rates that are in some cases, 10 times higher than other countries, because these, these ordinary acts of aggression that normally end up with somebody with a wound, um, end up with somebody dead.

And that is also the story of American suicide.

We'll get into that as well I assume.

Um, American suicide rates are so exponentially high because when you try to commit suicide by drug overdose, you're successful 3%.

When you try to commit suicide, by, by, by, by a gun, uh by with a firearm you're successful 90% of the time.

That's the issue that we're trying to get at.

AMBLER: Great.

Um, so I just want to remind the audience to, uh, um, ask questions.

Uh, the sort of second half of this engagement will, uh, be your questions that Senator Murphy will be answering.

There's a Q and A function in the zoom screen.

So I encourage you to, um, drop as many, uh, drop your questions into the Q and A function, and I'll get to as many of them as I possibly can.

Senator the next question I have for you is sort of more of a process one, um, and involves like, uh, the, the, the reason to write a book at all.

It's sort of, uh, it occurs to me that this sort of the nature of leadership in Congress and the Senate in particular is changing, right?

Influence was once a product of seniority and access to donors.

But now you have this new crop of leaders, this new generation of leaders, people like you and Senator Booker and Senator Harris and Senator Gillibrand and others who I'm, I'm probably getting in trouble, leaving out who have, you know, found new ways to project influence.

I mean, you know, Twitter is obviously become a very powerful medium for many political leaders, um, to both beneficial and destructive ends.

Um, so that the question is why a book?

MURPHY: Well, it's a good question.

Um, and, and, you know, I wrote every word of this book.

So I spent a lot of time on, it, wrote a lot of it on trains and planes and, you know, on late weekend nights after the kids had gone to bed.

But, um, I thought it was important.

I thought it was important for a couple of reasons.

One, I want this book to be, um, a handbook, a primer.

Um, it is mostly history, right?

It was mostly sort of an explanation of why America got this way, because I think that's really important for activists to understand.

It's about the history of the NRA.

It's got the history of the second amendment, um, the story of American violence and the last third of the book is this conversation about what interventions, um, can reduce violence and how we make those happen.

It discusses what is similar about all the different kinds of violence in this country, the suicides the homicide, um, the domestic violence crimes, but also what's different about them, why that matters.

Um, and what I think is that you know, often folks don't want to get involved in this issue because they always think that the other side, right, that mouthy uncle who, you know, loves to talk about gun rights and the second amendment, they always know so much more than we do.

So the purpose of this book is to equip folks, not just the understanding of the politics, but the context of American violence and particularly American gun violence.

So I think this will help educate a new round of advocates, but, um, the book is also, you know, a bit of a personal narrative.

This is not a biography.

It doesn't tell any of my story before 2012, but it does, I hope, really candidly, um, you know, walk you through sort of who I was before, um, 2012, um, somebody that was pretty prodigious legislatively, but, you know, frankly lacked an emotional connection to an issue, um, lacked maybe the willingness to take risks on behalf of the issues that he cared about, um, and who I am today.

Uh, you know, somebody who I think is, you know, just in my soul connected to getting this done, who measures my value as a human being, by my accomplishment, or lack of accomplishment on the issue of violence prevention, uh, and who is willing to take risks.

That story, I think will be interesting to people because I do think I sort of bare a little bit more of my soul than others who write some of these similar books, but it's also an invitation for people to try to go through kind of the same process, not the same one, but say, hey, listen, if I emotionally connect with this issue, if I want to make a difference, I need to take some risks.

I need to out of my comfort zone.

I hope that-that story was I think, helpful and maybe a bit cathartic for me to write.

Uh, but I also hope that it'll help empower people to, um, step up in their own way as well.

AMBLER: Well, I think it's a remarkable template for a book.

And for those who haven't read it, it's not your sort of average book that an elected official sort of publishes it's, you know, gives you an immersive look at a particular issue.

It really, it sings, right?

It's well-written and I really congratulate you and doing something a little bit different.

Um, something that you, you keep on coming back to Senator, um, are the different ways that gun violence affects us as a country.

And, you know, as an advocate, um, you know, I view the sort of segmented types of ways that, um, you know, gun violence manifests itself as a tragedy, of course, but also, um, as an opportunity to really change things and to heal this country and to address gun violence, because it's not just this sort of, you know, huge problem necessarily, uh, that, you know, doesn't have any particular one solution.

There are different, sort of, angles of attack on the gun violence epidemic.

So I was hoping you might walk some of the people here at Politics and Prose through the different ways that gun violence manifests itself in American society and a path forward for addressing some of them.

MURPHY: Well.

So let's, let's go back to the 1840s.

Let's go back to that moment where America starts to become a global outlier of violence.

I mentioned one of the factors, which is the explosion of handgun ownership in the United States, but the other two factors, sort of tell the story about the work that we need to do outside of the realm of gun regulation.

The other two things that happen in the sort of early to mid 1800s that set us on that trajectory are one, the massive explosion of the slave population in the United States, um, after the invention of the cotton gin, there are just hundreds of thousands, more slaves in an order to keep those slaves, um, uh, working for free it necessitates this epidemic rate of violence, right?

Um, massive amounts of violence perpetuated by whites, against African Americans and America who becomes numb.

We become anesthetized to violence.

And you see, during this time that the rates of white on white violence starts dramatically increase.

It stands for this, you know, pretty simple story that from the start of America, violence has been used by whites as a method of suppression and oppression against blacks.

Seen in slavery, to Jim Crow, in lynching to incarceration.

But if you don't have a reckoning with America's racist past and presence and the past the present and, and the dominant groups use of violence in order to suppress a subjugated group, then you aren't going to make the progress you need, which is why this moment of sort of, of, of racial justice reckoning paired with an ability to change our gun laws are so promising.

The other thing that happens in the 1840s and 1850s is that we have this huge wave of migrants that come to the country and they start competing for sort of scarce economic space.

Uh, and what we learned then is that, um, poverty and violence are very much connect regardless of what race you are.

Um, and that is part of the, the American story that wherever you see poverty, frankly, in black neighborhoods or white neighborhoods, you see elevated levels of poverty, and elevated levels of violence.

So if you aren't taking on poverty and trying to figure out what to do in a society where 40% of Americans don't have more than $200 saved up in the bank, and you also, aren't going to get where you need to cause changes in gun laws alone.

So, you know, in the end, this book is maybe frustrating and it doesn't tell you that there is a panacea, right?

It doesn't tell you that you're going to get all the way there with a ban on assault weapons, or, um, background checks.

Um, we're going to have to, um, make investments in empathy, right?

We're to have to, um, find a way for white Americans to understand the existence of black Americans and act differently.

Uh, and then we're also going to have to take on this increasing sort of portion of the population that's living in economic desperation.

A guy in Baltimore says to me, as I'm doing research for the book, he runs into me on a street corner as I'm walking around, one of the more violence prone neighborhoods in the city.

He says, let me tell you why Baltimore has these dramatically high gun violence rates.

He says, "Hunger, man, it hardens your heart."

Hungry, he's like "You ever been hungry?"

I said, "Yeah, I've been hungry."

"No, no, no.

You ever been HUNGRY?"

Right.

And what he's saying is that when you get that economically desperate, you make different choices, and that's a big piece of the puzzle as well.

AMBLER: Thank you.

Um, on that front, we're getting a few different questions, um, about, uh, gun violence as a public health issue and whether a public health approach to gun violence is, um, the right one, obviously one of our most recent successes as a movement has been, you know, finally after 25 years of NRA stonewalling, being able to allocate $25 million, uh, to the NIH and CDC to actually study gun violence as a public health concern.

And, um, it's, uh, something that makes sense to people these days now that we're all amateur epidemiologists.

Right?

Um, so your thoughts on gun violence as a public health concern?

MURPHY: Um, first of all, let's just like take stock of what an amazing victory that is, um, because you still have a Republican president backed by the NRA and a Republican Senate backed by the NRA and we just reversed, um, an NRA victory that they have been sort of riding the coattails of since the 2000s.

We now have a pretty substantial investment in anti-gun violence research just shows you how fast this issue is moving in our direction.

Yes, of course this has gotta be treated as a public health epidemic because it is, it is always, um, frustrating, um, especially for communities of color to see the prism for the severity that is this issue.

Um, as simply the number of people who die, um, because it is no coincidence that all of the under performing schools, uh, in the state of Connecticut are in the neighborhood with the high rates of violence, but we know is that when you fear for your life every day, right, walking to school, going to the corner bodega, um, your brain chemistry changes, right?

You get these hormones that are released that corrupt your brain.

They don't allow you to create relationships.

They mess with your ability to pay attention for long periods of time.

And these kids, whether or not they get shot.

Um, just that trauma of the fear of violence, knowing seven people who have been shot, it just changes the way their brains function.

And so, um, you've got a view this as a public health epidemic, which is, um, which I think is the right way to think, but it also speaks to the bigger returns that we'll get, right?

It's not just, you're going to have a lower number of people who get killed by guns every year.

You're literally going to have kids performing better in school, um, as a result of taking these illegal weapons off the streets.

AMBLER: Thank you.

Uh, we have a question from Audrey C. who asks, "How did you do research for the book?"

MURPHY: Yeah, I mean, and I did a lot of original research for the book.

I was lucky um that though I decided to write the whole thing myself, uh, I decided to bring on a research partner Victoria Bassetti, um, shout out to her.

She has worked in and around the Brennan Center for Justice, uh, and has written a book of her own.

She is just wholly committed to this cause and helps me do a lot of the research.

I did, uh, much of it on my own during those train rides and plane rides and blatantly late nights.

Um, and, and I did, you know, go into it, wanting to understand, um, some questions that I didn't completely comprehend, even having been part of the movement for six years.

So much of what you'll find in the first few chapters, um, like the section on the biology of violence explaining, you know, how our brains sort of push us towards rage, how certain brains are so broken that they rationalize mass violence.

A lot of that was, was, was new to me, as well as the history, um, of, uh, American violence.

One of the things that I found out in writing this book is that, you know, American violence rates sort of start in 1840 and just do this.

They actually do.

They go up straight down, back up straight down again.

And what's amazing.

Is that not coincidentally, right before those two big declines in American violence are the two biggest anti-gun violence measures in the last 100 years.

Passed in the late 30s and the mid-90s, in the 90s, Brady Bill and the assault weapon ban.

And so what I learned through the book is that history tells me that my instincts are right, that when you pass substantial anti-gun violence legislation, A, operationally by taking dangerous weapons off the streets, it reduces violence, but it is also this moral signal that changes the way that people think and that moral signal, you know, may have just as big impact ultimately on violence as anything else.

And a lot of that I learned in the book, um, I had some help in research, did a lot of it on my own.

You'll look at the notes section in the back and it's pretty, uh, it's pretty substantial, um, uh, give people some avenues to their own research as well.

AMBLER: Thank you.

So Michelle Arsenal has a question about the NRA and what's happening.

And certainly this is a, um, you know, the, it's not just the success at, on our side of the ledger, right?

It's, um, some strategic errors that the NRA has made over the years um that I think have hurt its ability to project influence.

And then of course you have these new cases being pursued.

So Michelle asks, "How do you think the recent investigation into the NRA foundation, and I presume also the NRA will change the NRA if at all?"

MURPHY: Well, I, I think it's, um, it's really problematic for them.

It exposes the sort of massive corruption inside of the organization.

But, um, as Peter, you know, this was an organization whose, um, resources and influence was already on the decline.

I mean, the NRA has been hemorrhaging money, um, for years, uh, their approval ratings, which even in this few years after Sandy Hook were still fairly robust.

I mean, you know, a few years after Sandy Hook, more people approved of the NRA than disapproved.

Those approval ratings have cratered, uh, as well.

Um, there's a lot of reasons for that.

Um, you know, I give a lot of credit frankly, to the kids out of Parkland.

I mean, when they, sort of, finally decided to sort of call it like it is, um, and call out the NRA specifically, um, it just gave license to a lot of other people to go on the offense.

But as you mentioned, it is also due to some really bad practical decisions that the NRA made and they made those decisions largely because they became so dependent on the industry over the years that they lost sight of their members.

You know, the industry changed their business model instead of selling one gun, to lots people, they decided to sell sort of very high profit center guns like AR-15s in large numbers to a small number of people.

And they did that based upon this idea that only, um, you need to simply arm yourself against the government.

Um, and so they need to create this impression that the government was, "Out to get your gun, that background check was just a mechanism, get all your guns registered.

So the government could come and get 'em."

And that drove this paranoia, which helped drive gun sales.

The problem is, is that in representing the interests of the gun industry, they sort of lost track of their own membership, 85% of which support universal background checks.

And so they started to hemorrhage dues.

They started to lose persuasive power as their numbers dropped and put themselves in a position where they were already weak, even before this lawsuit from the Attorney General of New York came along.

Um, the other quickly, the other thing that sort of happened to the NRA is that, you know, used to be that they were the most important endorsement in the Republican party.

Um, you know, I don't know whether this is better or worse, but now Donald Trump's endorsement is what matters.

And so their imprimatur is just not as sacred as it once was.

I'm not sure that America is better off for Donald Trump substituting for the NRA, but that also is part of what's lessened their power.

AMBLER: Speaking of Donald Trump, we're less than two months out, for what many view as the most important election in our lifetime.

Um, guns has figured relatively prominently in the debate, um, you know, stretching back from the primaries, to now into the general election.

You've, uh, worked closely with Senator, uh, then Vice President Biden over the years.

Um, and you know, you've had some, you know, special moments with him in the aftermath of tragedy.

And as both of you have sort of, you know, looked how to look forward to how to tackle this issue.

So I'm, I'm wondering if you couldn't share some thoughts on what motivates Vice President Biden and of course, your friend, Senator Harris, to take this on.

And, uh, what, um, what you view, uh, the likelihood of what they might do, uh, in 2021, if they're elected?

MURPHY: Well, listen, I couldn't be more excited.

Uh, Joe Biden is one of the few people out there who's beaten the NRA before.

Um, and have somebody like that, uh, in the White House is just indispensable.

I mean, I'll tell you sort of two quick stories about both of them.

Um, one, uh, from the aftermath of Sandy Hook.

So we, uh, held a forum, uh, right outside of Newtown.

I don't remember exactly when, but maybe six months after Sandy Hook to sort of talk about how we heal as a community and how we pass laws that will make sure it doesn't ever happen again.

And Vice President Biden then came out and gave the keynote.

And we asked him afterwards to spend a little bit of time, first with the Sandy Hook parents.

Then second, we asked him to spend some time with the victims of, uh, urban gun violence.

We brought a bunch of families in from Hartford and New Haven and Bridgeport at that point, the Sandy Hook families sort of... now the Sandy Hook families and those families in New Haven, Hartford are all one unit.

They act, they're active together.

But this was just a few months after, so it was two separate meetings.

Um, and I'll never forget.

I thought that, you know, that Biden had a million other things to do that day and that he was going to stop in and have a quick conversation.

Um, no, he had cleared his entire day for us, uh, and he could have spent an hour and it would have made people moved and happy, and he could have gotten back on his plane and gone back down to Washington, but he didn't.

He spent the entire day, hours and hours and hours, um, with every single one of those families, every Sandy Hook family, and then in the second meeting, every single family from Hartford and New Haven and Bridgeport that came up there, every single one of them felt a personal connection, felt like their child's life had been valued because the Vice President took the time for them.

And I've just never seen anything like that from a public servant.

Um, and that's the kind of empathy of this country in general needs it now.

Um, it's also the kind of leadership we need to get this done.

And then quickly, um, Kamala, after Parkland happened, uh, she had just been elected to Congress and, uh, she was the first phone call I got, um, literally within a day Kamala called and said, um, "What do we do?"

Right?

"What are we going to do?"

And you'll actually remember this, there was I think you and Robin was there, but we, Kamala and I convened a meeting of all of the anti-gun violence groups and all of the active legislators, um, to sort of plot what we were going to do heading forward.

And to me, you know, she's an ally, but she's also strategic, she's operational, right.

Um, and I think that's a real asset as well to have somebody that cares about the blocking and tackling and one, the sequencing of how you get these things done.

And so, um, we just couldn't ask for two better champions.

We just gotta make sure they win.

AMBLER: Um, I have a question coming to us from, uh, Siddhartha Banerji and he says, "I tuned in late and wondered if other societies had made the transition to post violence states more or less?"

MURPHY: Well, um, yes, there, there, there certainly obviously, you know, countries that have sort of very low, um, rates of violence and not surprisingly, um, their sort of history tracked differently than our trip in history.

So, um, whether we like it or not inside of us exists, um, uh, a, a sort of genetic predisposition to view those that we perceive as different from us as threats, right.

That's literally baked in from our days as hunter-gatherers.

Um, and unfortunately, you know, demagogues, like Donald Trump play upon that instinct, but it also does mean that in a heterogeneous societies, societies with, um, different ethnic groups or religious groups, there does tend to be elevated levels of violence in part, because of that genetic code.

It also means that more homogeneous societies, like for instance, Scandinavian countries, um, uh, tend to have lower rates of violence.

Second, where you have lower poverty rates, right?

Where you have a higher economic floor, again, think European countries and Scandinavian countries, there's less violence, there's less economic desperation, there's less violence.

And then, um, the final two factors are, um, well essentially the final factor is in countries that have essentially decided to, um, have the government having a monopoly on violence, meaning they don't allow for, you know, militias and they don't allow for humans to have military arsenals, um, in their, um, in their basements.

Um, there are much lower levels of violence.

And so in countries that sort of became democracies after their Kings and Queens, and kind of decided, to not let their subjects to be weaponized.

They tend to have lower rates of violence as well.

Again, we're, I'm not asking you to look for us to, you know, go to the places that some other countries were, where they outlaw private right of gun ownership.

I'm just saying, if you do a better job of controlling violence, if you, confront um, our sort of racist past, if you eliminate the sort of epidemic levels of poverty, you're gonna get some pretty big returns, and the differences between us and countries with really low levels of violence, they kind of paint the path forward for us.

AMBLER: You bring up this concept of a monopoly of violence and you invoked, uh, uh, you know, the presence of militias.

Um, in the year since you wrote this book, um, we've entered a sort of relatively new period, although maybe we just revisited an old one, but, uh, where, uh, violence and politics have become somewhat more interwoven.

And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on what we can expect in the future as, um, guns and politics sort of, you know, get taken more hand in hand and what threats, you know, public officials and our institutions, democracy, society as a whole might face as a result?

MURPHY: Well, you know, I think, uh, it's probably the latter of the sort of two hypotheticals you pose because this is not new, right?

This is actually, um, this chapter of, of militia and vigilante justice that we're seeing play out in the streets of America.

Um, much of it imposed by, you know, white Americans who are using weapons to re-impose "Law and order" on communities of color and protest movement, um, has a long tale in American history.

There's a passage in the book, a quote from a young Abraham Lincoln, uh, writing in the 1830s about the dangers of massive vigilante justice, all across America.

Of course, much of the 1810s and 20s and 30s, um, there are masked white men running throughout the South, um, murdering black people, um, as means of private justice.

I think we're just seeing the latest incarnation of that.

Um, it is unfortunately made more dangerous and more lethal by our decision to allow these militias and private individuals to have weapons of mass destruction, to have, uh, assault weapons.

And so, um, well, um, uh, you know, ultimately I think a lot of our reckoning with our racial past, um, and a decision to grow empathy between racial groups, uh, will solve some of this problem.

Um, disarming these militias at least of the weapons that can kill 20 people in 30 seconds, uh, is a sort of short term mechanism to protect ourselves.

AMBLER: Donna Alberto writes, "My question to the statement above is this, if Americans are still buying guns in increasing numbers without the traditional influence of the NRA, then how do we convince those Americans to give up their guns?"

MURPHY: Well, and you've seen, you know, massive increases in gun sales.

Uh, in fact, June of this year, saw more guns sold legally than any other month in American history.

And I do think a lot of that is due to the way in which the Commander in Chief, um, is deliberately stoking fears, fears of African Americans, fears of Mexicans, fears of Muslims, fears of the protesters, right?

The president has been the best rallying cry for sort of gun sales there is.

And so if there was a more rational, reasonable leader who is trying to calm the country down, rather than stir it up, you might not see these massive increases in gun sales.

The question though is how do we convince people to give up their guns?

Well, part of it involves confronting the fundamental mythology of the NRA, which is that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, right?

That is wrong.

It is not true.

In fact, if you have a gun in your house, it is, um, often 12 times more likely to be used to kill you or to be used in the commission of a crime than it is to be used by you.

In some movie theater style, heroic defense of your home against an intruder.

And this book spends some time talking about that, like getting into the real statistics of how guns are used.

And, you know, we have to be clear about that as much as I, you know, think and come to the conclusion of his book, that there is probably a second amendment right to own a gun if you want to protect yourself, you are making yourself less safe, not more safe by putting a gun in your house.

I just think we shouldn't be afraid, um, to puncture, uh, that mythology, to poke a hole in it.

Because if more people understand that, then I think more people will have second thoughts about it.

Um, so I think that's part of our duty.

Some people say, well, you know, "Even if you change the laws of background checks moving forward, there's so many guns out there it's not going to make a difference."

Well, you know, the evidence really doesn't tell us that the evidence tells us that as soon as you, um, put, uh, universal background checks requirement, uh, on a community, violence rates go down pretty quickly, um, because a lot of people are buying the gun right before they commit the crime.

Uh, so, uh, as much as that remains an issue, the fact that you would still have lots of people with guns, you actually can get a lot done just by changing some of these laws, taking care of the low hanging fruit.

AMBLER: Thank you.

I'm going to wrap two questions here into one.

The first comes from Lisa Allen who writes, "How do you deal with the fatigue and desensitization towards this issue?

And what recommendations can you make for people passionate about this during a time of competing issues and crises in our country?"

And an anonymous attendee asks, "What was the hardest part emotionally and research wise to write?"

MURPHY: Well, you know, it's funny if you... probably very few authors, uh, sort of admit this, but if you read the book, I actually answer that question in the book at the beginning of the chapter, uh, on homicides, um, mostly on violence that happens in communities of color.

I, I, I write right at the beginning of this chapter, um, when it came time to write this chapter, um, I got cold feet.

I balked, I wrote the rest of the book, and then I came back and wrote this chapter last.

And the reason was, um, that I, you know, worried about the inauthenticity of, uh, of a white guy writing a book about violence done to black people and violence done in the name of racism and a system of maintaining a racial caste system.

It was certainly the hardest for me to write in part because I just didn't know, um, whether I could write it well.

What I ended up doing as you'll see, is writing it really through the voices of others.

Uh, a lot of it is through the voices of people in Baltimore.

I went up and spent some time in Baltimore and sort of told their stories, right, what it's like to live in those neighborhoods.

Um, an awful story in this book about, um, my visiting a school at the very moment the shooting happens down the street, a shooting, it turns out that killed the father of twin girls in that school.

Father who had dropped the kids off that morning and on his way back to his home got shot dead.

Um, and so that, that, that chapter was very hard to write.

Um, I hope I did justice in the end, but, um, uh, I ended up telling it through the story of others.

Um, so, you know, what is the first, um, question?

Um, you know, again, I, I, I think that this issue is now ever present.

It is true that the media still only covers the issue of gun violence when there's a mass shooting, right?

Regardless of the fact that every day there's 100 people that die, but no one can escape this any longer, right.

For people who live in the East end of Bridgeport, they can't escape it, right, because it's happening every day.

But, you know, even for sort of white, suburban middle class parents, you now have to figure out what to say to your kid when they come home to school for the first time describing their active shooter drill.

Like I had to, with my kindergartner who came home and told me that he got shoved in a bathroom with 26 other kids and told to stay quiet as practice for what happens when a bad person enters the building.

And so it's sort of, it's not going away for people.

And even though you may not think that it's a dominant issue in the 2020 election, it is, it really is.

Um, because, um, it's nothing matters more.

Nothing matters more than the physical safety of your family.

Now, everybody feels like the physical safety of their family is compromised.

And so I think, and I'll tell you, you know, last summer, Donald Trump for a few weeks played footsie with people like me.

Um, and, and, and you Ambler, right?

So for a couple of weeks, he was entertaining the idea of getting right on background checks, in the end, the NRA came into his office and he abandoned the discussions.

But even Trump started to realize, 'Oh boy, I don't know that I can get reelected if I'm with the NRA.'

And, and you see a lot of other Republican politicians through slowly getting right on this, because they realize that it's an ever present issue.

AMBLER: Well, Senator an hour really flies by, and there's still some questions from the audience withstanding, but we won't be able to get to those, cause I do want to close with this last question.

Uh, you tell many stories and craft a narrative via anecdote, um, in a very compelling way, but you close with one in particular about, um, a very compelling educator, Annie Murphy.

Um, so I invite you to share a little bit about her with us and tell us why you chose to close your book with her story.

MURPHY: Well, you know, I appreciate you sort of mentioning how the book is structured.

This, this can, this topic obviously can be a tough one to confront.

And so what I've tried to do in this book is, you know, really tell a series of stories.

So stories about, about history and policy, you know, as a means to sort of not drown folks in sort of sorrow and, uh, murder and suicide.

There's a lot of really just interesting and compelling stuff I hope in this book.

Um, but the story that has moved me the most over the years, um, which you know, is a story that is emotional, is the story that ends the book.

And it's the story of Annie Murphy.

I won't tell the whole story now, but the short of it is, um, that, uh, Annie died that day in Sandy Hook.

She was a special education paraprofessional.

I've gotten the chance to get to know her family since, um, she um, died that day, um, they found her inside the classroom with her arms wrapped around another little boy.

That little boy is Dylan Hockley.

His parents actually were the founders of Sandy Hook Promise, one of the sort of sister organizations of Gifford, um, Gifford's.

Um, and, um, the reason for that is that, um, Annie was Dylan's paraprofessional.

Dylan had autism and they were connected at the hip.

And, um, you know, I just think of what went on during that five minute period of time.

Nobody knows, but Annie, you know, obviously had a lot of choices to make, she could run, she could have hidden, she could've panicked.

Um, but instead, somehow she found Dylan and to this day, Dylan's parents sleep a little bit easier at night, because they know that at that moment of terror, Dylan had somebody with him, that loved him, that cared about him, right.

And that makes a difference, um, to Dylan's parents.

And so this book is called "The Violence Inside Us", right?

And for much of the beginning of this book, it's sort of an exploration of why are we so violent as a species, as a nation, right?

What about that is inevitable, but what about it isn't inevitable?

And I come to the conclusion that there is violence inside us, biologically and historically as a people.

But that story is sort of put at the end to show that there is something else that lies inside of us, right?

There is love.

There is goodness there is heroism, that also lies inside of us.

That lied inside the unlikeliest of all heroes, a special education para-professional um, who went to work in a place in which she never thought she would ever encounter violence.

And so it ends that way because I hope the whole book is A, an education to empower people to become better advocates.

Um, I hope a compelling read that sort of you know, holds people throughout the narrative.

Um, but also an invitation, you know, decide to order your life in a way in which you do something small, that's uncomfortable, that's not easy, that is slightly heroic to make sure that at some point in all of our lifetimes, um, there are less than 100 people dying from guns in this nation.

And I was so glad to have, have you agree to sort of lead this because you're, you're a hero of mine, Peter.

Gabby is obviously both of our heroes for having done fundamentally exceptional thing in the middle of her struggle and recovery to have founded this organization.

And, um, you know, I hope that people do pick this up and, you know, in the end find some, some inspiration, if from nothing else this story at the end about what really lies inside all of us.

AMBLER: Well, thank you so much, Senator Murphy.

Certainly if I ever write a book, um, uh, about what has transpired in this movement over the past several years, um, there's going to be no more central character than, than you.

Um, your leadership and your ability, um, to, you know, do difficult things has really shaken things up in a meaningful way.

So, um, I know that this book has made me a better advocate.

Um, and I thank you for that as well.

ANNOUNCER: Books by tonight's authors are available at Politics and Prose bookstore locations, or online at www.politics-prose.com.