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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Can we connect too with the biggest news events of the last few weeks that usually get talked about separately, the deadly school shooting in Michigan and the recent Supreme Court cases on abortion? Separate news events that we usually talk about separately, but Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy connected them recently. Here are a few seconds of Senator Murphy on the Senate floor.

Senator Chris Murphy: I listened to my Republican colleagues come down here one after another today and talk about the sanctity of life. At the very moment that moms and dads in Michigan were being told that their kids weren't coming home because they were shot at school due to a country that has accepted gun violence due to Republicans' fealty to the gun lobby.

Brian: Now, reforming the gun laws to require background checks and limit the sale of assault weapons, at least those two things, has been a core priority for Senator Murphy. Maybe ever since the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut nine years ago this week. It was December 14th, 2012, 11 days before Christmas when gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 children in the first grade plus eight adults, including his mother who had bought the AR-15 that Lanza used.

Even that didn't move the needle in Congress on guns. Senator Chris Murphy joins us now on why he connected the dots of those two news stories. We'll also talk about some other things going on. Little things like preserving electoral democracy, China and Russia tightening their alliance against the West, cost of living, inflation, and that all Chuck Schumer wants for Christmas is getting Joe Manchin to yes. Senator Murphy, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Murphy: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Brian: A little bit for people who don't know you that well on your political grounding. You were elected to the Senate in November 2012, just one month before the Newtown school shooting. Tuesday was the ninth anniversary of that horror. Did the timing of your election and that inspire you to be the face of gun legislation in the Senate or do you think you were headed for that anyway?

Senator Murphy: This was not an issue that I worked on in the House. I'm embarrassed by that in retrospect because I grew up in Wethersfield, Connecticut. It's just a stone's throw from some of the most violent neighborhoods in the state, in the south and north end of Hartford. Newtown changed my life. I very much recall just as acutely two weeks later right after I've been sworn into the Senate going to a community center in the north end of Hartford, where parents there were just aghast that the country had just woken up to this plague of gun violence after 20 kids were shot in Newtown.

It had been happening in their neighborhood to their kids for decades. My life certainly is now dedicated to the cause of gun violence, not just ending these school shootings but dealing with the trauma that really fundamentally changes the lives of kids who grew up in these dangerous neighborhoods, no matter whether they get shot or not, that the trauma of worrying about gun violence is, in many ways, cataclysmic just as getting shot is. I should have been working on it a lot longer before Sandy Hook and maybe I'm trying to make up for lost time.

Brian: Republicans will say your connection between the two issues is gratuitous. Guns are a constitutional right for self-defense unless they're abused. Abortion is the taking of innocent lives. Why do you speak of them together?

Senator Murphy: Well, there's just no way to look at Republicans as being anything other than wildly hypocritical. They care about ending abortion in this country because they believe that is a human life, beginning at conception. Their concern for human life on their terms seems to end when the child is born into the world. They have been just unbelievably cavalier about 800,000 Americans dying from COVID. Many of them children and young adults.

On that very day that the Michigan shooting was happening, they were parading down to the floor of the Senate one after another talking about how righteous they were in their work to protect what they call the sanctity of life, and yet there are a hundred people every single day dying from preventable gunshot wounds. I do think the two are connected. I think if you care about life, you have to care about life from the beginning until the end. This Republican Party, their, I think, laissez-faire attitude about the threats to our lives that are presented by a pandemic disease and gunfire is pretty stunning.

Brian: That's a pretty harsh condemnation of the Republican Party, the party that protects children from conception all the way through birth. Do you attach that to the Build Back Better bill as well and their blanket opposition to that since so much of that is about universal pre-K and child care and family leave?

Senator Murphy: Listen, I think it's hard to understand why we can't get any Republicans to work with us on policies that are very popular. Build Back Better is a bill that reduce costs for families, the cost of health care, the cost of child care. Republicans seem to talk a lot about costs these days but aren't willing to actually do much about it. I guess I do separate the issue of gun violence and the pandemic a bit from Build Back Better because, clearly, the investments we're making in Build Back Better will create healthier families, but the threats of the pandemic and the threats of gun violence are acute.

They are immediate. That's, I think, where I have a little bit harder time squaring this Republican focus on life with their unseriousness about, really, for many communities, the two most significant threats to life today, which are this disease and gunfire. Right now, gunshot wounds are the leading cause of death for young Black men in this country. We are still losing thousands a day from the pandemic. I do think that everybody's got to be very serious in an immediate way about those two threats.

Brian: You've made the point that your Republican colleagues vote against bills like yours on background checks and assault weapons even though the provisions are popular in almost every state. How do you understand the politics of that in 2021?

Senator Murphy: I think this is really about a Republican Party that has become just wrapped up in the gun lobby in the gun industry, that the endorsement of the gun lobby has become so critically important to the Republican Party that they can't pull away from each other. The reason, I think, is tragically simple. The Republican Party used to be a party of big ideas.

These days, they have one idea and it's just the destruction of government. If that's the central organizing principle of your movement, then in many ways, they have come to believe that the best way they can translate their bona fides as government haters is to support the ability of the population to be armed in potential insurrection against the government.

That NRA endorsement has become so, so critical to them, notwithstanding the fact that only 10% or 20% of Americans believe in what the NRA is trying to sell. We've got to find some other way to allow for Republicans to demonstrate how conservative they are or even how much they hate government without having to adopt this very unpopular position that the gun lobby pushes them into opposing background checks, something that's supported by 90% of Americans.

Brian: Listeners, we can take some calls for Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy as we talk about a variety of issues here on gun laws, Build Back Better, democracy, inflation. We'll get through some of his work on the foreign relations committee. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. If you're in Connecticut, call your senator. Anyone from the other 49 states can call too or anywhere else for that matter. Vladimir from Moscow, call right in. 212-433-9692.

Senator, I'm curious if you approve of what California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is trying to do about guns or at least what he says he's going to do. He connects that issue to the Texas abortion law too, but in a different way. As The Washington Post describes it, Newsom announced he's going to push for a law next year to ban assault rifles by allowing private citizens to enforce it.

Texas's unique enforcement structure on abortion would be turned against conservatives that is citizen enforcement as opposed to government enforcement in a way that no doubt makes liberals feel really good, says The Washington Post. My question for you is, Senator, does that make you feel really good or does it make you feel queasy about this new way to try and circumvent constitutional rights even when it's for a cause you believe in?

Senator Murphy: Honestly, I have very mixed feelings about this because I do worry about this descent into vigilante justice. I think it speaks to a broader withering of faith in government institutions that governments are now deciding to outsource the enforcement of laws and norms to private individuals. That sounds like a very, very dangerous slope for this country to get on.

At the same time, as we found with so many other issues, I worry that the Republicans and the conservative movement has pushed us into a corner. I hate to use this analogy, but it's difficult for us to unilaterally disarm. It's difficult for us to watch Republicans redistrict and gerrymander and not do it ourselves to make sure that we don't get very politically in Congress.

It's difficult to watch them turn the citizenry into law enforcement officers on issues that are priorities for them without responding in kind. Listen, I wish we had never gone down this road. I wish that the Supreme Court had never found the Texas law constitutional, but I'm not sure that we can allow ourselves to live in a world in which conservative laws get enforced through this method of citizen-filed lawsuits, but other laws do not. A really difficult question. I'm still thinking my way through it.

Brian: Gun law question from Samuel in the Bronx. Samuel, you're on WNYC with Senator Chris Murphy. Hi.

Samuel: Hi, Senator Murphy. I'm curious why the focus is always on imposing more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners rather than focusing on the people who actually commit crimes with guns. Every time I hear about these new laws, you guys just seem to be restricting what was previously illegal sale between people or some cosmetic feature.

We suddenly make the gun more dangerous, but arguably makes it safer. Like in your own state, there's a whole series of restrictions on cosmetic features on what's the most popular rifle in America. You guys just seem to be wanting adding more restrictions on the law-abiding instead of going after actual criminals who use crimes and making very high punishments for those types of things.

Senator Murphy: Listen, thanks for the call. It's obviously a familiar refrain. First of all, the piece of legislation that I think we should pass right now is universal background checks. That's not adding any burdensome requirement on law-abiding individuals. All it's requiring is that everybody have to prove that they are not a criminal before they buy a gun, something that most everybody goes through when you buy a gun either from a bricks-and-mortar retailer or when you buy a gun in a state like Connecticut or New York that does have universal background checks.

The problem is many states don't. A lot of the crime guns that get shipped into New York City and into New Haven and Bridgeport and Hartford, they come from states where you can, as a criminal as someone with a criminal background, go to an online retailer or go to a gun show and buy a whole mass of weapons without anybody knowing your history. On the question of assault weapons, listen, I just think the proof is in the data. We banned the sale of these assault weapons for 10 years.

It is just not a coincidence that during those 10 years, we saw a pretty substantial decline in mass shootings. It's just true that these semi-automatic rifles, that due to many of the features attached to them, make them much easier for amateurs to shoot in crowds and shoot very rapidly. They are the choice of the mass killers. I'm just going to tell you. In Newtown, if that kid had a handgun with normal magazines, there'd be kids alive today. Instead, he had a semi-automatic rifle with 30-round clips. Kids escaped when he was swapping one clip for another.

Had he been forced to do that 20 times rather than 3 or 4 times, there would be more kids alive. In a state like Connecticut, we don't allow for the sale of those weapons. I don't get a lot of complaints that hunters or folks that shoot for sport or people that just want to have a weapon to protect themselves are unable to find the weapon that they need. I just know that during those 10 years that we didn't allow the sale of those weapons, we saw a lot less mass shootings. I think that's a pretty reasonable trade.

Brian: Ken in Stanford, you're on WNYC with your senator, Chris Murphy. Hi, Ken.

Ken: Hi, how are you? Senator, I'd like to, first of all, thank you and our Connecticut representatives in Congress. You're doing a great job. I certainly appreciate everything you're doing. I agree with everything you just said about the so-called conservative. It's really not conservative. It's radical. At any rate, I have a question about COVID. My 30-year-old son is visiting from LA. He hasn't been here in two years. He got a PCR test in LA. Actually, much earlier in the year. He got another one. He found it very easy to get it and it was $75.

We've had him in isolation here for three, four days. We're in Stanford. We cannot find any place to do a PCR. They're all listed. The easiest after much effort hours of trying, we found one one week from today. Stanford Hospital, we're waiting online for them, but they haven't gotten back to us, wants $225 for a PCR test. What happened to the trillion-dollar COVID aid? What happens to indigent people? Why can't we get a PCR test? What's going on? We just gave up and got a rapid test and, fortunately, he's negative.

Senator Murphy: We have to do a better job. I think you've identified a lot of the shift that has happened from PCR tests to rapid antigen tests. That's where a lot of the focus has been. Frankly, that's what my family is doing right now, these rapid tests, but they are not as conclusive as PCR tests. One of the things we've found is that we have a limited public health workforce in this country. We have shifted much of that workforce away from doing PCR tests to doing vaccinations.

Obviously, we're learning as we go along. We thought we could focus on vaccinations right off the bat. We may be able to then split that public health workforce between testing and vaccinations. Because we are now immediately in the business of boosters, we've had to keep a lot of that workforce on the vaccination bid. It's just a testament to how we have got to spend some long-term resources in building back up that public health workforce so that you can walk and chew gum at the same time.

You can run a full testing program and run a full vaccination program. That is a lot of the reason for why you're finding it harder to get that PCR test in person because we've pushed so many folks out to do vaccinations. Listen, we got to do better. You are right. I'll talk to the governor about this, but we've got a bigger challenge ahead of us, which is making sure we have enough people to be able to do both for this pandemic and to get ready for the next one if it comes.

Brian: Ken talked about the availability of PCR tests, but he also talked about the price. We were talking on a segment the other day about the price of a rapid test. If rapid tests that we take at home are supposed to be such a key now to reopening to going about our lives at work or family, whatever, knowing that we're safe and those rapid tests cost-- I think a typical price is $24 for a two-pack at the local drugstores. So many people can't afford that. I don't see any policy items on the table other than asking insurance to cover it, not everybody's insured, and people still have to lay it out of pocket.

Senator Murphy: This was a lot of the reason that we decided to put a bunch of flexible dollars in the States. I don't mean to pass the buck here, but we did send down hundreds of billions of dollars to the States under the belief that it would be probably better for them to construct these systems of free testing or discounted testing rather than trying to establish a system built out of Washington. It's something I know that we're working on in Connecticut, but something we need to do better.

Brian: Gina in Westchester, you're on WNYC with Senator Chris Murphy. Hi, Gina.

Gina: Oh, hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. Senator, I'd like to pivot to the issue of your colleague, Senator Joe Manchin, and get your views on maybe how Senator Manchin can be brought back into the fold of the Democratic Party. He appears to just have become such an obstructionist to both the policies and the legislation that is so critical to keep our democracy safe. As frustrated as I am with the hypocrisy of the Republican Party as you so well-articulated, I am even more frustrated by the position of Senator Manchin. I'm wondering, can you speak to that a bit?

Senator Murphy: To an extent. I think I know everybody is asking this question about Wilson or Manchin end up supporting the Build Back Better Act or voting rights. I can't speak for him and I shouldn't. It's not fair to him or me, frankly, to try to speculate about the thought process he's going through. I do think a lot about the expectations that we have of this democratic majority, given our margin.

Obviously, we're in this unique position in which we need to, when it comes to the Build Back Better agenda and voting rights, convince every single Democrat to support these measures because there are no Republicans willing to join us. Republicans talk a lot about the high cost, but they're not willing to support a bill, Build Back Better, that will lower costs. It used to be that everybody in the Congress, Republicans and Democrats, supported the Voting Rights Act.

Now, Democrats have to deliver all the votes. FDR, when he was passing all of his new deal legislation, had huge Democratic majorities. He didn't get 100% agreement from Democrats. He didn't need to. We do because we have the slimmest of all majorities. Joe comes from a very different state than Connecticut. He comes from a state where Donald Trump won by 30 points.

It stands to reason that he's going to come to Congress with a different set of beliefs than I do. The folks in Connecticut just believe different things than folks in West Virginia, but we're not giving up. We're working hard this week, next week if we have to, the week after that if necessary to try to get Senator Manchin to agree to some set of investments in people that lower the cost of living that will change lives. I'm not giving up. The President's not giving up.

I don't have any great insight or update to provide you, except to say that we're going to keep at it. Here's my belief and this is, I think, the President's belief as well. People are really reconsidering their support for democracy. This threat to democracy, it doesn't just come from a demagogue like Donald Trump. It comes from American citizens who have not seen democracy deliver for them. Their lives are in turmoil. Their wages are flat, costs arising, and they want to see democracy do something for them.

This is our chance to do that. This is our chance to pass something that is not just going to affect people's lives around the margins. It's going to reduce the cost of child care by $10,000 a year. It's going to give them a substantial ongoing tax cut. I think this is maybe the most important thing we can do to save American democracy is pass the Build Back Better Act. We've got to try to convince Senator Manchin and others of the urgency of getting this done.

Brian: As important as voting rights and we've only got two minutes left. I know you got to go, so we're not even going to get to the foreign relations issues. I guess there's a push among some members of the party now to deemphasize Build Back Better and prioritize voting rights, especially with all these Republican states passing bills that would let them cancel election results if they feel like it.

Senator Murphy: I guess what scares me most about these state laws in Republican states is that change, right? It used to be that one principle was sacred that we have a transparent bipartisan process of counting the votes. What is happening right now is that Republican states are giving up on that. They are making the process of counting the votes partisan, which just seems to be an invitation for an election to be stolen, especially given this party believes, by definition, votes for Democrats must be illegitimate.

I don't know that I prioritize one versus the other. We need to both get done a democracy protection act and we need the Build Back Better agenda. Frankly, whichever one can get done first, whichever one has 50 votes first, let's take the vote and then live to fight another day on the other one. My hope is that in the near future, we'll be able to pass either Build Back Better or the voting rights bill. Ultimately, we need them both.

Brian: You need Joe Manchin for both.

Senator Murphy: That's right.

Brian: We'll have to leave it there with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. We always appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Senator Murphy: Thanks, Brian.

Brian: Happy holidays.

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