Guns, America and the “Violence Inside Us”: US Senator Chris Murphy Explores Origins of the Nation’s Gun Culture and His Own Odyssey for Reform

US Senator Chris Murphy

[ M us ic ]

Female : Welcome to Conversations on Health Care with Mark Masselli
and Margaret Flinter, a show where we speak to the top
thought leaders in health innovation, health policy, care
delivery, and the great minds who are shaping the hea lth ca re
of the future. This week, Mark and Margaret speak with US
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut , who’s activism around
sane gun laws was spawned by the Sandy Hook tragedy, in
which a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 schoolchildren .
Senator Murphy has written a critically acclaimed book T he
V iolence I nside U s : A Br ief H istory Of An O ngoing A merican
T ragedy which examines the contributing causes of Americans
gun violence epidemic, and the growing chorus for change.

Lori Robertson also checks in the M anagin g E dit or of
F act C heck.org looks at misstatements spoken about hea lth
policy in the public domain , separating the fa ke from the facts.
We end with a bright idea that's improving health and
wellbeing in everyday lives. If you have comments, please e -
mail us at [email protected] or find us on Facebook, Twitter,
or wherever you listen to podcast. You can also hear us by a sking Alexa to play the program Conversations on Health
Care. Now stay tuned for our int erview with US Sen ator Chris
Murphy here on Conversations on Health Care.

Mark Masselli: We're speaking today with US Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut . P rior to entering the Senate in 2013 h e served
three terms in the US House of Representatives. He's a member of sever al s enate c ommittees, including Health
Education, Labor and P ension C ommittee, as well as Senate
Foreign Relations and S enate A ppropriation C ommittees.

Margaret Flinter: Senator Murphy is the author of the critically acclaimed new book The Violence Inside Us : A Brief History Of An Ongoing
A merican Tragedy , which examines the contributing causes of
America's gun violence epidemic and ultimately some solutions. His advocacy for saner gun laws was spurred by the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, which left 2 6 people
dead, including 20 children. Senator Murphy, welcome to Conversations on Health Care .

Senator Chris Murphy: Yeah t hanks for having me. Really appreciate it , a nd thanks for
all your tremendous work and your great counsel and friendship to me over t he years. Great to be with you.

Mark Masselli: Senator, we thank you for this compelling a n d such a well
written book. As you note, America has a gun problem , and
also has a p ublic health problem e xactly a nd just an incredible

US Senator Chris Murphy

toll on tens of thousands of Americans all across the United
States . Y our activism for the passage of the saner gun law
comes about as you describe it as an awakening of confluence
of two powerful events which really animated your work ever
since. F irst is the terrible tragedy that , I think , all Americans
know, which took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Newtown, Connecticut . B ut the other which was as compelling
but probably a less well known story , but one th at's really
happening all across America, you're confronted by angry
parents who had lost their child in inner city gun violence,
which had largely been ignored. T hey demanded an answer as
to why it took so long to recognize the epidemic of gun
violence devastating their community. I wonder if you could
just talk to our li steners about these pivotal events that launch
you into this journey .

Senator Chris Murphy: Well, I appreciate you give me the chance to talk about this
book. This book is mostly a history of American violence and
explanation as to why America has used vio lence over the
centuries and decades in order to order our society , used
normally by in groups as I call them , to suppress and keep
subjugated out groups. It's , of course, also a book about the
policies that incentivize violence, but also the policies that can
spin us out of this cycle of violence .

W eave throughout this book is my story because, as you
mentioned, while I think I was a pretty prodigious le gislator,
we worked a lot on the issue of health care when I was in the
state legislature and in Congres s . I admit that I was a legislator
without an emotional attachment to an issue that sort of
drove me to get up in the morning in the way that many issues
do for many political actors. I got that emotional calling in the
wake of Sandy Hook. But maybe just a s important as the story
I tell from a month and a half after Sandy Hook, maybe just a
month after Sandy Hook , I go to this community center in the
north end of Hartford, and I meet with these parents, the
parents of the victims of gun violence in Hartford . T hey are
just absolutely furious , right . Their message is what the hell
took you so long? Where have you been? You've been in
politics in Connecticut for over a decade, and now you're
showing up in the north end of Hartford because 20 white kids
in Newto wn died ? There were 20 kids and young men and
women who died at the hands of guns in Hartford in 2012
alone before Sandy Hook ever happened , and n ow you're
here ?

T he book actually starts with the story of one of those kids. In
fact, a young man who died in an argument over a girl that

US Senator Chris Murphy

turned violent and deadly. Two months before Sandy Hook,
Shane Oliver's death, just a stone's throw from my house in
Hartford. T he book is -- yeah it’s a story of how I came to
recognize that this was not just about the mass s hootings, this
was about 100 people dying every day from guns in this
nation. It's about all of the kids who fear for their life who may
never actually be shot, but have their brain chemistry changed
by that daily fear of violence. It is a public health ep idemic. It's
one that now drives my life and my life's work. M y hope is that
in reading this book, which is really a primer on why America is
so violent and what to do about it. It provides folks with the
invitation to undergo some form of the same transfo rmation
that I've undergone over the last seven years.

Margaret Flinter: Wow. Well, Senator, th e book is incredibly compelling , a nd
there's a lot of compelling stories and statistics in it. O ne that
really struck me is this notation that Americans are 27 t imes
more likely to die from gun violence than people in any other
economically advantaged nation on Earth. W e're not just
talking about the mass shootings, which of course, command
our attention, but 40,000 deaths by gun happened to this
country last year alone. We're also talking about suicide,
crimes of domestic violence, accidents, and other factors.

W e had Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn on the
show recently, and they were talking about deaths of despair
in America, yet another area where w e see an increase in early
deaths by suicide by gun in particular , so many social
determinants that play into America's history of guns and
violence . Y ou say not so much a gun problem maybe but really
a story of poverty and economic disadvantage. You make the
cont rast between where you grew up n ot so far away from the
north end of Harford. Talk with us a little bit about that.

Senator Chris Murphy: W hat's i nteresting is that America is not much more violent
than the rest of the world until about the middle 1800s. T he
first part of my book is sort of a history of American violence.
At that point, our violence rates and our murder rates start to
spiral upwards, and we become a global outlier a nd we never
come back down to earth. Wh at happens during that period of
time is really threefold. First, we have this massive expansion
of slavery in the United States after the invention of the cotton
gin . In order to maintain a slave economy, you have to have
epidemic levels of violence. America sort of becomes
anestheti zed to that vio lence because we need just
gargantuan levels of it in order to keep a million people
enslaved.

US Senator Chris Murphy

We also have the first giant wave of i mmigrants in the country .
What we know, unfortunately, is that when you have a lot of
people of different ba ckgrounds competing for economic
space, limited economic space, violence is an offshoot . W e
have this sort of biological instinct inside of us, unfortunately,
to fear those that are different from us, or that we perceive to
be part of a different tribe. As you have these big waves of
immigration in America, you also tend to have spikes in
violence . I use that to explain that whether we like it or not,
America was probably designed to be a nation with higher
rates of violence, because our entire economy is p redicated on
the use of violence.

T he fact that we're melting pot is going to naturally lead to the
sort of more violent contest. The problem is, there was a third
factor that starts to spiral our rates upwards, and that is the
invention of the handgun , a t that same time . America decides
not to regulate the use of the handgun like every other
advanced nation, and all of a sudden this country which is
already kind of a smoldering f ire of violence, we decide to
pour gasoline on it by arming the entire nation to the teeth.

A lot of sociologists who study th ey say , America was probably
going to always be more violent. But we probably have twice
the murder rate in this nation over our long history because of
our refusal to control the spread of guns. T hat's the s tory. It's
not all about guns , b ut guns is the sort of spark that has
created this fire that is now out of control.

Mark Masselli: But I do want to pull the thread on violence in America.
C ertainly if you're a black American, it's been a violent country
fo r 400 years. W e've heard the Black Lives Matter talk about
that. Y ou point out very clearly this is much about the story of
race in America is about guns of the impact of centuries of
slavery, Jim Crow laws, redlining mass incarceration, and all
significan t drivers of the Afri can - American experience and
w hat do you describe as America ns racist caste system . Y ou
offer what I thought were a couple of powerful quotes in your
book, a soldier in Syria has less of a chance of dying than a 21
year old black Americ an. T hen an African - American man in
Maryland is 14 times more likely to be killed in gun homicides
than a white man in Maryland. I'm just wondering if you can
pull together your thought as how race has helped shape your
understanding of violence and how th ese two are intertwined.

Senator Chris Murphy: You can't write a book about violence in America without
writing a book about race b ecause we have just changed the
form of the violence that we perpetuate on people of color. It

US Senator Chris Murphy

starts out as slavery , i t then changes itself into Jim Crow and
lynching and vigilante justice. Today it ’ s mass incarceration ,
and it's the intentional imprisonment of communities of color
into neighborhoods of endemic poverty, the violence just
looks different , b ut its intent is the s ame to maintain this racial
caste system, where white folks are here a nd blacks are here.
It takes many, many forms. We are unfortunately are dealing
with one of those forms today, police officers using violence to
kill and beat people of color. It also co mes from the just vast
undervaluing of black lives.

W e just don't try as hard to solve crimes that are committed
against African - Americans. W hat happens is that there
becomes a system of self - help justice in these neighborhoods,
because in Los Angeles only one third of murders are getting
solved. Whereas in white suburbs, 80% of murders are being
solved and so folks take justice into their own hands. There's
so many ways in which our reliance on violen ce are devaluing
of black lives has led to an increase o f violent crime against
those same communities.

At the same time, Mark, I do make the point in this book that
it's dangerous to just look at violence through a racial pris m
b ecause , in fact, violence in this country tracks poverty more
closely than it trac ks ra ce. In fact, if you were a poor white
person in the United States, you are just as likely to be the
victim of a violent incident as you are a poor black person. It's
just that we have way more people that are black in poverty
because of this racial ca ste system that we've maintained. You
have to both attack sort of endemic poverty and America's
racist past and present if you want to do something about the
violence rates in the nation.

Margaret Flinter: Well, poverty, racism, health disparities, all tra cked together
and certainly in the midst of this COVID pa ndemic w e are
reminded and I want to thank you for your many, man y, many
years of fighting for access to health care for all people . B ut
we're reminded that we still have too many people, even right
here in your home state that don't have health insurance and
don't always have access to health care. I wonder this link
between gun violence, access to behavioral health care ,
mental illness . Y ou, I thought , laid out some really interesting
points in your book that maybe we shouldn't be looking at
mental illness as the first path and finding it early when we're
looking at gun violence. Y et, I know you would agree that we
should be working very hard on making sure that everybody
has access to health care, i ncluding behavioral health care .
How d o these all tie together in your understanding?

US Senator Chris Murphy

Senator Chris Murphy: Yeah, I think it's really dangerous to make an equation
between mental illness and violence. Y ou guys do a wonderful
job of talking about this becau se those of us that work in the
field of health care know that people who are mentally ill are
much more likely to be the victim of a violent episode, rather
than the perpetrator of it. O f course, there's zero evidence
that America has more mental illness than any other high
income nation in the world , a nd yet we have a gun violence
rate that's 20 times higher than everywhere else.

E ven when you look at these mass shooters, I know it stands
to reason that every single one of these mass shooters must
be ment ally ill. That's actually not true. O nly about half these
cases, i s there even a sign of a diagnosable mental illness?
Sometimes narcissism and megalomania , feeling of being an
outcast along with easy access to an assault weapon can turn
into a mass shooti ng even without a mental illness. I think
w e've got to solve our mental illness epidemic and our crisis of
access to mental health services, per iod stop , and not think
that is actually going to solve the problem of gun violence in
this country b ecause that problem is driven -- I argue in this
book largely b y issues of racism, poverty and access to guns .
It’s not that you don't work really hard on mental illness, you
just don't expect that that's going to unlock all the keys to
America's violence rates.

Mark Masselli: We're speaking today with US Senator Chris Murphy of
Connecticut. He's author of critically acclaimed new book, The
Violence Inside Us: A Brief History Of An Ongoing American
Tragedy . I want to pull the thread on some of the solutions
that you' re recommending, and I note that you really put a
premium on background checks. Also, walk through some of
the successes , I think you also said Missouri was an example of
where they repealed a gun law that they had in the increase.

But we had David Gergen on the show , and Gergen is always
talking about is there American solution to our problems . I’m
wondering if you could just share some examples both on the
legislative side of things that could be done , b ut how do we
find this seam of opportunity to work w ith people who are on
the other side who don't necessarily understand that the only
way to get there is through legislation . Are there other ways
that you're promoting in terms of communication across the
deep g ulf that exist?

Senator Chris Murphy: Well, I mentioned this opening story in this book is this 20 year
old young man who was shot in October of 2012. H e got into
a n argument with another group of boys about things they

US Senator Chris Murphy

were saying regarding his girlfriend. Now if that argument was
to happen five mil es away in the town that I grew up in
Weathersfield , m aybe one of those kids would have gotten a
black tie, but that would have been the result of an argument
over a girl. Unfortunately, there was an illegal weapons sitting
in the front seat of one of the cars nearby. One of the folks
who got hit, went and got that gun shot at Shane Oliver is
dead .

T hat illegal guns started out as a legal gun. T he reason why I'm
such a [inaudible 00:17:13] on background checks is that if you
make sure that everybody goes th rough a background check
before they buy a gun, it's likely that that thing never finds its
way to that car , b ecause it is regularly felons who are selling
these weapons on the streets of places like Hartford . T hey get
them because they go down into places without background
checks and buy a whole load of weapons from a gun store or
from a gun show or online. B y shutting down this illegal gun
trade by requiring everybody to get a background check
before they b uy a gun, you'll just have far fewer guns out
th ere and far fewer arguments that turn deadly.

You mentioned, how do we sort of bring folks together in this
conversation. I'll push back on that a little bit because I think
this is a little bit of a mythology , that is perpetuated all of this ,
this idea th at guns is a super controversial issue, and that it's
my responsibility to try to change the way that I talk about it i n
order to bring this country together. 95% of Americans think
that universal background checks is a good idea. 70% of voters
think that assault weapons should be banned. More than 50%
of al l republicans in this country d on't think that assault
weapons should be sold on our streets.

Guns, as it turns out, is one of the most unifying issues in the
country. The NRA for years painted a picture of guns being the
most controversial third rail in American politics. They were
l ying, it was never true. I think that right now it's all about sort
of activating voters , getting more people intelligent about the
choices that th eir members of Congress or their state
legislators are taking they're often in contravention of 90% of
voters. It’s more today about education and activation, rather
than about changing the way that we talk about this issue to
try to move that number from 95 to 97. I don't know that
that's a good use of our time as a movement.

Margaret Flinter: Well, I'm go ing to take a few more minutes of our time on this
one, because I think that is so fascinating. Y ou've made the
point in the book that maybe there's been some chinks in the

US Senator Chris Murphy

NRA ’ s a rmor too, which certainly has been looked at as a
pretty monolithically negative control over this. But in light of
all the powerful advocacy groups that have emerged in recent
years, in particular, since some of these mass shootings and
high profile shoot ings, E verytown for G un S afety , M oms
D emand A ction , Gabby Giffords O rganization, the Stoneman
Douglas kids who were amazing, I think , in their work as young
people demanding change. M aybe talk about the landscape
now in Washington , now that we know 97% of the country
maybe isn't so wedded to things as they are . W hat's the
climate politically in Washington? We're in an election year.
What are your thoughts about this as a time whe re we might
see some real change happen?

Senator Chris Murphy: Well, it's funda mentally different today than it was in 2013. In
this book, I tell the story of our failure to pass a background
checks bill i n 2013. I tell the story of the NRA, the NRA starts
off as kind of a sleepy pro - gun control organization that gets
taken over by a group of anti - government hardline right
wingers in the 1970s and turn it into the NRA we know today
which Brooks no compromise on gun laws. I think what
happened over the last seven years is that we just stopped
being afraid of the gun lobby . W e stopped l etting them set the
agenda. We stopped letting them tell people that this was a
controversial issue , a nd we got educated . W e built our own
movement . Y ou referenced some of the groups that are most
powerful , that's my hope for this book is that this book is a
tool by which more people can get educated.

I tell the story in this book of a voter confronting me on the
issue of guns way back when I was in the state legislature and
how I very purposefully dodged the issue because I just
thought I'd lose it , t he ar gument . I was pretty sure he knew
way more about guns and the second amendment that I did,
and so I just kind of weaved around the confrontation . Well, I
don't need to weave around those confrontations today,
because I know just as much as the other side k nows, and
that's what I think we have benefited from the maturation of
our movement, and more people having access to information
in order to make this argument.

Mark Masselli: We're in a time where we're talking about allies. I'm
wondering what allies you could point to in terms of trying to
embrace sort of this middle ground of making progress on this
that you've worked with, and you've talked to a couple of
compelling stories of Senator Manchin trying to get through
some -- on a bipartisan basis . B ut tal k about potential a llies
that might be out there w here the people could emulate .

US Senator Chris Murphy

Senator Chris Murphy: Well, I do sort of make what some people will probably view
as a surprising concession in this book. I admit that after my
sort of long study of the c ons titution and the second
amendment and the founding fathers intentions, I think there
likely is a right to constit utional right to gun ownership .

Mark Masselli: The Heller Amendment .

Senator Chris Murphy: Yeah, the Heller decision, I think , is -- I wouldn't write it the
same way they did. But I think it's largely corrected, as I think
about how to try to bridge the political divides that exist in
Congress. I argue in this book, that sort of Democrats saying,
h ey, listen we believe that there's a right to pri vate gun
ownership, but we also believe government has the ability to
regulate that right. I think that's a really safe place for us to be .

I think there are new allies every single day. Last summer I
spent a bunch of time negotiating a background checks b ill
with the president directly and with other Republicans, and we
had all sorts of Republicans who wanted to work with us that
would have never picked up my phone calls back in 2013.
S ome of them are doing that because they're legitimately
moved by the pa ce of violence in this country and the number
of mass shootings . B ut most of them are coming to the table,
because they just fear the anti - gun violence movement
politically more than they fear the gun lobby. Th at's why I
make the argument at the end that, don't think too much
about what to do , just do something every single day, every
single week, do something that moves the needle on this
issue, because as we raise that volume level, believe me , that
will start to get my phone calls returned much more quic kly.

Margaret Flinter: We've been speaking today with US Senator Chris Murphy of
Connecticut. He's the author of the critically acclaimed new
book, The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History Of An Ongoing
American Tragedy , a deep dive into America's gun viol ence
epidemic. You can learn more about his important legislative
efforts by going to murphy.senate.gov or follow him on twitter
@ Chris Murphy CT. Senator Murphy, we thank you for your
dedication to p ublic s ervice for your commitment to this and
so many pu blic health causes over the years, and for joining us
on Conversations on Health Care .

Senator Chris Murphy: Great, thank you guys.

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Mark Masselli: At Conversations on Health Care we want our audience to be
truly in the know when it comes to the fac ts about health care

US Senator Chris Murphy

reform and policy. Lori Robertson is an award winning
journalist and Managing Editor of FactCheck.org, a
nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters that aim
to reduce the level of deception in US p olitics. Lori, what have
you got for us this week?

Lori Robertson: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden claimed President
Donald Trump's effort in court to nullify the Affordable Care
Act would “ take 100 million people with preexisting conditions
and move them in a direction wher e they can't get coverage . ”
But they wouldn't all lose coverage as the claim misleadingly
suggest, barring highly unlikely circumstances. It's true the
Trump A dministration has backed a lawsuit seeking to
invalidate the Affordable Care Act. A decision from the
Supreme Court on the case isn't expected until next year, and
the ACA increased protections for those with preexisting
medical conditions. D oing away with it in the absence of any
new legislation would have repercussions.

The ACA prohibited insurers i n any market from denying
coverage , charging more or excluding coverage of certain
conditions based on health status. The 100 million figure
which comes from a 2018 report by the consulting firm
Avalery [PH] is an estimate for the number of Americans
outsi de of Medicare and Medicaid with preexisting conditions,
including cardiovascular diseases, mental health disorders,
obesity and diabetes. Without the ACA, they'd lose the
preexisting condition protections in that law . B ut to be at risk
of being denied ins urance, they would have to seek coverage
on the individual market or those without employer or public
insurance by plans.

Only 6% of the population gets coverage on the individual
market, while 49% have employer based plans. Before the
ACA, those buying pl ans on the individual market could face
denials or higher premiums based on their health. Employer
based plans, however, couldn't deny insurance before the
ACA, but they could decline coverage for some preexisting
conditions for a limited period up to a ye ar if a new employee
had a lapse in coverage of more than 63 days. Biden made his
claim in a late August interview on CNN, his campaign pointed
out to us that the 100 million would be at risk of not being
able to get coverage. But again, those Americans wo uld have
to be seeking coverage on the individual market to be denied
an insurance plan outright. T hat's my fat check for this week .
I'm Lori Robertson, M anaging Editor of F act C heck.org.

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US Senator Chris Murphy

Margaret Flinter : FactCheck.org is committed to factual accura cy from the
country's major political players and is a project of the
Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of
Pennsylvania. If you have a fact that you'd like checked, e - mail
us at www.chcradio.com , we'l l have FactCheck.org's Lori
Robertson check it out for you here on Conversations on Health Care.

[Music]

Margaret Flinter: Each week Conversations highlights a bright idea about how to
make wellness a part of our communities and everyday lives.
September i s suic ide prevention month, and it's o f particular
interest to the Veterans Administration. An estimated 22
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be aware that they can make a difference just by reaching out .
I t's called the P ower of O ne campaign . T he idea that one
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Female: The p ower of o ne small action, one conversation, or one
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throu gh a difficult time . F or free 24/7 confidential suppor t call
the Veterans Crisis Line or the Military Crisis Line .

Margaret Flinter: According to Dr. Caitlin Thompson, Deputy Director of VA
Suicide Prevention Program , i t takes only a moment and just
one small act can start them down t he path to getting the
support they need. The VA has launched a new suicide
prevention hotline. It's now collaborating with community
groups across the country to prepare them to better address
the needs of these veterans, many of whom don't know how
to as k for the help they need. Veterans , s ervice members and
anyone concerned about them can call the Veterans Crisis Line
1800 - 273 - 8255. They can chat online at Veterans Crisis
Line. n et/chat or send a text to 838255.

Even if they're not registered with the VA or enrolled in VA
h ealth c are , all Veterans Crisis Line resources are optimized for
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veterans the help they need before it's too late. Now, that's a
bright idea.

US Senator Chris Murphy
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Mark Masselli: You've been listening to Conversations on Health Care. I'm
Mark Masselli.
Margaret Flinter: And I'm Margaret Flinter.
Mark Masselli: Peace and Health.
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