U.S. Senator Chris Murphy gave an impassioned speech about gun control at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia Wednesday night, telling the crowd he has a sense of outrage he's never felt before.
Murphy was with parents in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 when they learned their children had been killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting.
He told delegates in Philadelphia that there are days when he wishes he had not been at the town firehouse that day, where parents the same age as Murphy, with children the same age as his, learned of their children's fate. The massacre of first graders left 20 children and six educators dead.
"I am furious," Murphy said. "I am furious that in three years since Sandy Hook, three years of almost daily bloodshed in our cities, the Republican Congress has done absolutely nothing to prevent the next massacre. It stokes inside me a sense of outrage that I've never felt before."
Last month, Murphy and other senators took the floor of the Senate for nearly 15 hours, just a few days after 49 people were killed in a mass shooting inside an Orlando, Florida nightclub.
Murphy blasted Donald Trump's rhetoric on guns. "When he sees gun violence devastating our communities, it's just like everything else," Murphy said. "He sees it as an opportunity. Another opportunity to convince Americans that they should fear one another. Another opportunity to do the bidding of the gun lobby."
Murphy said the gun lobby is fighting to keep open loopholes that 90 percent of Americans want closed.
"Trump says that in his first hour in the Oval Office, he'll roll back safeguards that we already have," Murphy said. "And even more sinister, Trump said that by the end of his first day in office, he'll mandate that every school in America allow guns in their classroom. Think about that for a moment. Of all of the things that Donald Trump could've promised to do on his first day in office, he chose weakening background checks and putting guns in elementary schools. This is a fate that we cannot accept."
The daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Hochsprung -- who was killed in the shooting -- also made an emotional plea for gun control.
