Senator who backed Sandy Hook reforms says Trump launched ‘dizzying campaign’ of violence amid Brown taking pictures | EUROtoday

A Democratic senator who was a champion of gun reforms within the wake of the Sandy Hook taking pictures in his state blamed Donald Trump on Sunday for encouraging a “dizzying” marketing campaign of violence, hours after authorities introduced that an individual of curiosity was apprehended for a mass taking pictures at Brown University.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy informed NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press that the president’s rhetoric and actions since returning to the White House made violence “more likely” in America.

Representing the state within the Senate since 2013, the senator is a number one voice for gun security restrictions amongst members of his get together.

His remarks got here after America was rocked by information Saturday night of a gunman opening hearth in an educational constructing on the Ivy League college in Rhode Island, killing two folks and wounding 9 others.

“He has been engaged in a pretty deliberate campaign to try to make violence more likely in this country, and I think you’re unfortunately going to see the results of that on the streets of America,” Murphy mentioned.

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Of the Brown taking pictures, he mentioned: “This is not shocking because over the last year President Trump has been engaged in a dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country. He is restoring gun rights to felons and people who have lost their ability to buy guns. He eliminated the White House Office of Gun Violence Protection, and he has stopped funding mental health grants and community anti-gun violence grants that Republicans and Democrats supported [in 2022].”

The White House issued a livid assertion in response.

“Before spreading these lies, Chris Murphy should take a look in the mirror,” Trump’s deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson wrote. “Chris and his colleagues have regularly used rhetoric meant to incite their followers to violence, including smearing ICE officers as Nazis and calling their political opponents fascists.”

She mentioned assaults in opposition to ICE officers “have skyrocketed” and pointed to the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, “not to mention the other violent riots that leftists have engaged in.”

“The Violent Left is a problem whether Chris admits it or not,” she informed Politico.

The Independent has requested additional remark.

This yr noticed a discount in cases of mass casualty incidents involving firearms after these numbers spiked over 2018 and 2019, in keeping with a database created by the Associated Press and USA Today monitoring mass shootings stories.

There have been not less than 154 incidents of gunfire on college grounds, killing not less than 49 folks and inflicting not less than 135 accidents, in keeping with gun violence prevention group Everytown.

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There have been a lot of high-profile mass shootings this yr throughout the United States, nevertheless, and on Sunday morning Americans awoke to the information of one other tragedy unfolding in Sydney, Australia, after gunmen killed greater than a dozen folks and injured not less than 29 others at a Jewish gathering on Bondi Beach.

August and September noticed two of these incidents unfold: the assault on the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minnesota, adopted by Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University weeks later.

Both shootings renewed offended debates about gun tradition and the Second Amendment in America, with Kirk’s loss of life scary particularly passionate responses from each Republicans and Democrats. Allies of the president, together with members of Trump’s interior circle who have been personally near Kirk, sought to make use of his loss of life as a method of portray the broader American left as violent and dismissing costs of political violence being fomented by the appropriate.

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Many Democrats, then again, expressed condemnations of Kirk’s homicide whereas deriding cases the place the Turning Point USA co-founder had expressed racist sentiments and opposed restrictions on gun possession meant to cut back the variety of mass shootings in America.

Murphy spoke out in opposition to efforts or inclinations by Republicans to criminalize dissent and Democratic-aligned organizations within the wake of Kirk’s loss of life and bulletins by the White House that the Department of Justice will go after “antifa” teams across the nation.

He has lengthy blamed inaction in Washington, inspired by the firearm and taking pictures sports activities foyer, for permitting a lethal downside to spiral uncontrolled.

A gunman killed 20 six- and seven-year-old youngsters in the course of the bloodbath at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

In the aftermath, Murphy supported bipartisan laws which finally failed beneath the Senate’s filibuster threshold that will have expanded background checks and launched research on mass gun violence in America.

In 2022, within the wake of one other mass taking pictures in New York, he gave a Senate ground speech accosting his fellow lawmakers.

“What are we doing?” he mentioned. “Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job … if your answer, as this slaughter increases, as ours kids run for their lives, we do nothing?”