Murphy talks to Trump about background checks in final negotiations
‘I'm begging the president to come to the table’
WASHINGTON — A leading Democratic voice on guns, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy spoke with the President Donald Trump Wednesday as his party pressures Republicans to call legislation expanding background checks for a Senate vote.
Murphy and Sens. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, had a phone call with the Trump for about 45 minutes Wednesday to discuss a possible deal. The bipartisan trio is at the heart of the Senate’s negotiations over the background check legislation, which cleared the House in February.
Trump is expected to announce his position on background checks in the next day or so.
“We are working very, very hard together, all of us, and we're seeing if we can come up with something that's acceptable to everybody,” Trump told reporters Wednesday after his call with the senators. “It's a subject that's been going on for decades. Decades they've been talking about it. So we're looking at background checks, and we're looking at putting everything together in a unified way so that we can have something that's meaningful. At the same time, all of us want to protect our great Second Amendment.”
Trump said he would speak to the senators again Thursday.
Murphy tweeted Wednesday afternoon he was “glad” to talk to the president.
“I reiterated to him that there is nothing meaningful we can do on gun violence legislation that the gun lobby supports,” Murphy said. “To save lives, Republicans are going to have to take on the firearms industry.”
Murphy and the other senators told reporters on the Senate floor Wednesday they were unsure if Trump would lend approval to background checks despite their 11th hour effort, but some hope remained alive if the Republican and Democratic senators could agree. On Monday, Murphy predicted that Americans who support background checks for commercial gun sales would be “disappointed once again.”
The pressure to pass new gun legislation mushroomed in August following several deadly mass shootings, including those El Paso and Odessa, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. When Congress returned to Washington Monday following their August recess, top Democrats resumed a drumbeat cries calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump to immediately approve new gun measures, including background checks.
“Background checks are the base upon which we must do everything,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday at a press conference with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Red flag laws — which Trump has previously indicated his support for — would be ineffective without background check legislation, he said.
The seeds of the new expandedbackground check debate date back to the 1980s and the littlenoticed Firearms Owners Protection Act. Over the past few weeks, Murphy has remained near the fore of how to revise federal law now.
Murphy, Manchin and Toomey spoke to Trump on Aug. 3 about background checks as well.
In January, Murphy, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and 38 other senators reintroduced legislation to expand federal background checks to all gun sales. Unlicensed and private sellers and gun shows can now legally skip background checks before gun sales.
“I'm begging the president to come to the table and agree to a common sense background checks expansion bill that will save lives,” Murphy said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “I'm begging my colleagues here to do the same.”
Murphy represented Newtown in the U.S. House of Representatives when in 2012, a shooter killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, gun legislation has remained a top priority of his agenda.