Murphy on Guns: U.S. Kids Growing Up with ‘Crippling Fear’ Because Our Choices

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Tuesday on “CNN This Morning” that children in the United States “are growing up with a devastating, crippling fear that we have delivered to them by choice.”

Co-host Poppy Harlow said, “You know the fact that guns are the leading cause of death in American children now, more than car accidents, the fact that the number of gun deaths for kids is up 50% from 2019 to 2021, but a lot of your Republican colleagues have said in recent weeks we’ve done what we’re going to do on guns. So is that what we should tell our kids?”

Murphy said, “We can’t because our kids are growing up with a devastating, crippling fear that we have delivered to them by choice.”

He continued, “No other kids in any other high-income nation worry about whether they’re going to survive their day at school or survive their walk to school. I mean, you frankly can’t quantify the threat to our kids just by the number of kids who die.”

Murphy added, “I live in, you know, a neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut, that has a high rate of gun violence. I have a group of young seventh and eighth graders that I meet with every now and again just to hear from them what they want me to be working on. Their number one concern is their walk to and from school. School, for them, is actually the safe place. For them, they worry for their lives when they’re outside their home, in their neighborhood. That kind of trauma, it frankly, biologically changes the brains of these kids because they’re living through trauma that’s similar to what a soldier goes through when they deploy overseas. It’s no coincidence that in these violent neighborhoods, you have these underperforming schools because the exposure to trauma and violence is literally ruining these kids’ ability to learn and adapt.”

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