The Democrats have quite an array of incompetent U.S. Senators, though some of them have excuses. Diane Feinstein is so old she makes Joe Biden look quick, and John Fetterman is brain-damaged. Senator Murphy, however, is special. He hates the Second Amendment almost as much as he hates Donald Trump. His preferred method of persuasion is bullying and fear-mongering. (All of those links are from the extensive Ethics Alarms dossier on Murphy.)
It is fine that Murphy doesn’t like the Second Amendment, but he has no choice but to follow it. He doesn’t get that, it seems. It is fine that he wishes that the Supreme Court wasn’t around to stop Congress and the President from violating the Constitution to, but he doesn’t understand that either. Thus he says things like this, to NBC’s Chuck Todd during Sunday morning’s broadcast of “Meet the Press”:
“If the Supreme Court eventually says that states or the Congress can’t pass universal background checks or can’t take these assault weapons off the streets, I think there’s going to be a popular revolt over that policy….A court that’s already pretty illegitimate, is going to be in full crisis mode.”
Then Murphy vowed went that his party would continue to “regulate who owns weapons and what kind of weapons are owned.” “You’re seeing Republican states like Tennessee looking at red flag laws, Texas considering raising the age to buy assault weapons. I think our movement is in a position to win,” he told Todd, who, as the good little Democrat lap dog he is, didn’t raise any objections.
It puzzled me that Murphy is a lawyer but doesn’t seem to know how the Constitution works. I checked: he got his law degree to go into politics. The ink was barely dry on his diploma before he was waist deep in the Big Muddy of Democratic political wars in Connecticut; if he’s ever practiced law, it wasn’t for long. That still doesn’t adequately explain why he thinks it’s appropriate to try to intimidate the Supreme Court, or why he can’t understand why a federal court just struck down a law restricting young adults (19-20) from owning guns (A citizen’s Second Amendment rights do not “vest at age 21,” the judge wrote) or that “red flag laws” are unconstitutional.
See, it’s a right, Chris. When there is a stated individual right in the Constitution, the government can’t take it away because of statistics, or pre-crime logic, or because it really, really wants to, or because the public understands the Constitution even less than you do. Protecting the public against violations of the Bill of Rights isn’t a “policy,” it’s what the Supreme Court is supposed to do.
This is another Hanlon’s Razor mystery: Does Murphy say things like this because he’s ignorant, or is he a crafty totalitarian counting on public ignorance and emotionalism while he knows full well that his position is legally untenable?
It doesn’t matter. U.S. Senators are required to respect and obey the Constitution, and if they don’t or can’t, they don’t belong in the Senate.
Ethics Alarms 
Actually Murphy is from CT. Maybe you got him mixed up with NJ governor Phil Murphy?
Ugh. Fixed.
(Yes).
Though I had the state right in the text….
My guess is Murphy’s take on guns and his single-minded focus on them results from the fact he’s the Senator from Sandy Hook. Good for business.
Our intrepid Ethicist asked:
“This is another Hanlon’s Razor mystery: Does Murphy say things like this because he’s ignorant, or is he a crafty totalitarian counting on public ignorance and emotionalism while he knows full well that his position is legally untenable?”
While Hanlon might just give him the benefit of doubt (that he is stupid and all . . . ) but, considering the flagrant totalitarian streak in the DNC/progressives I am going to assert that the Good Senator is, in fact, a fascist in training. Considering the others in his camp (for instance, Tlaib, Bush, Ocasio-Cortez, et al), he is in good company.
jvb
It’s unfortunate that Murphy will likely not read this post: it could be his Cliff Notes on the Second Amendment (which he desperately needs. I am jaded enough to be sort of surprised but no longer horrified by the many examples of our completely unsound legislators who presumably help guide this country.
The Democratic Party doesn’t ‘do’ rights. There are no inherent rights for the common people. We just have arbitrary privileges the government has deigned to allow us…for now. How else do you just go headlong into ‘government bureaucrats can order the entire country to participate in a medical experiment’?
As for a revolt… you want to call for a popular revolt and you want to be on the side that DOESN’T have guns? That tells me how serious you are about that.
Excellent point on the “revolt” part of your response. It’s the same question I’ve asked many times. Does the Left really want to try to take away citizens’ right to keep and bear arms – a right, by the way, that the Constitution doesn’t actually bestow but merely confirms in the 2nd Amendment – when it’s those citizens that have all the guns?!?
I’ve said (and written) this many times as well: governments come after your guns when they intend to do things that would normally get them shot.
Well, the ATF has been going door-to-door for the last year demanding people’s FRT’s and arm braces. They apparently got the customer lists from the companies that made them through a variety of questionable means and are now going around the country demanding people hand these things over and ‘show us all your guns’. I’m sorry, what kind of idiot would bring all their guns out onto the front porch with the ATF standing there? The ATF would probably just shoot you.
Next, they will come for our shoelaces.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/were-you-expecting-us-atf-agents-go-door-door-confiscate-frt-15-triggers
They haven’t gone after binaries yet, but surely will if they can figure out how. Not at the “deadline” for pistol braces (end of this month), and don’t know how they would ever track down any not sold as finished braced pistols by a manufacturer (which would have generated a 4473 form). Besides legit brace producers’ products, which are unlikely to be traceable, brace knockoffs have been available from sources like Aliexpress, and even (still) on Amazon, often under euphemisms like “outdoor sport tool”. Besides, ATF has already admitted that unless the brace is mounted on the firearm, it’s just a “stock”, and the pistol without a brace is just a pistol… Which puts the lie to their claim that any of this theater is fin pursuit of “public safety” goals.
Remember this?
https://archive.md/mgil3
Chris Murphy and Vincent Lane are cut from the same cloth.
I’d like someone to ask Murphy and idiots like him why the Supreme Court is illegitimate. I mean the only explanation I can think of is that he doesn’t think Trump was a legitimate POTUS, which would only be the case if he’s denying that Trump won the 2016 election, which would make him an election denier, which I’m told is effectively a capital crime. Strange!! It’s as if Dems are hypocrites and full of crap.
P.S., most of our issues stem from a string of questionable SCOTUS decisions back in the 1960s and 1970s, and yet I don’t recall a single conservative ever questioning the legitimacy of the court because of any of these decisions. But the GOP voters are somehow is the fascists
A lot of it also has to do with the Supreme court simply denying cert towards lower court ruilings that upheld handgun bans on the merits.
“Tennessee” is not considering a red-flag law; the weak-kneed Republican governor is calling a special session of the legislature to consider several “do something!” measures this summer, including a red-flag law, but the legislature (according to the ones I have spoken with) are having none of it. This is the same governor who won’t order the state bureau of investigation to release the Nashville trans shooter’s “manifesto.”
Would not red flag laws be useful against gangs?
All sorts of unconstitutional measures would be useful; the problem is that they are “pre-crime,” and slippery slopes to abuse.
Like this?
https://archive.md/mgil3
So would warrantless searches and racial profiling, but those are unconstitutional.
Let us not forget the words of Judge Wayne Andersen.
https://archive.md/mgil3
Bingo! It really troubles me how quickly some law enforcement “leaders” will abandon Constitutional principles and uncritically embrace ideas like wholesale warrantless searches. It also terrifies me how many if our citizens would support or at least accept such draconian measures, at least as long as they are directed at the “right” people.
I have the following article, from a few years ago, bookmarked as the quickest thing to which I can refer people for a concise summary of why red flag laws are, at best, questionable in their utility and, at worst, almost certainly unconstitutional:
https://fee.org/articles/7-reasons-to-oppose-red-flag-guns-laws/