Congresswoman Murphy in D.C. in April. Photographed by Aaron Berger

Murphy’s story has been remarkable from the very beginning. Her family fled communist Vietnam when she was only six months old, setting off on a boat that soon became adrift in the South China Sea. (“I barely want to fly with my children across the country,” she says today. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for my parents.”) A U.S. Navy ship eventually helped refuel and resupply their boat, effectively rescuing Murphy and her family from certain starvation, or worse. “That’s a moment of providence, but that’s also a demonstration of how great America is,” she says today, on the phone from her office in Washington, D.C. “That Navy ship was in the South China Sea on other missions and they chose to extend to our family a lifeline. It’s why I’ve always been deeply patriotic, because I’m not only grateful for the opportunities I’ve received, but also because I feel it’s part of our responsibility to extend those opportunities to the next generation.” She became a financial consultant at Deloitte, where she happily climbed the corporate ladder until the harrowing events of September 11 inspired a change in perspective. “I felt like I needed to go into public service,” Murphy says, “I rerouted my life in that kind of way.” She quit her job, went to get her foreign service masters degree from Georgetown University, graduated in 2004, and eventually ended up working as a national security expert at the Department of Defense. As a former refugee, Murphy was troubled by the wave of xenophobic sentiment that arose during the 2016 election. “I had been watching this presidential election year unfold, and the rhetoric was—well, it didn’t align with the America I knew,” she says. And then there’s the Steve Bannon problem. One of the first things Murphy did after taking office was introduce a bill that prohibited politicians from serving on the National Security Council. If you can recall, at the end of January, President Trump appointed Steve Bannon (one of his senior advisors and the former executive chairman of the alt-right site Breitbart News) to that very council; a few days later Murphy introduced her bill. “It wasn’t directed specifically at Steve Bannon, but he was the person currently in that role,” she says carefully. “I’ve worked at the Pentagon. I’ve been in conversations where we’ve considered sending men and women into harm’s way. The minute our all-volunteer force believes they are going to war for the benefit of one person’s political gain as opposed to the safety and security of this country, it basically causes that all-volunteer force to collapse.” Bannon was removed from his position on the NSC by Trump in April—Murphy called it a “huge victory for democracy”—which means that now she can focus her time and energy on the issue that initially led her to run for office: gun control. She’s already introduced a bill seeking to overturn a federal law that effectively prohibits U.S. Department of Health and Human Services agencies from conducting research on gun violence and firearm injury prevention. “At a bare minimum, as legislators from the Democratic party and the Republican party, we can at least agree to have a common set of facts from which to make good decisions as it relates to common-sense safety measures,” she says. She’s also stated her support for universal background checks, and supports a “no fly, no buy” security measure, which would prohibit terrorists on the no-fly list from being able to purchase a gun. Her surprise victory in November paired with her aggressive stance on gun reform has led Republicans to already start ramping up for a fight in 2018, when Murphy will be up for reelection. In April, the National Republican Congressional Committee bought ad space on a huge billboard on an interstate near Murphy’s home, where they have already begun to place attack ads against her. When asked how it feels to be such a feared target only five months into taking office, Murphy shrugs it off. “I’m really just focused on my job and doing the best I can for my congressional district,” she says. “Politics will take care of itself.” Spoken like a woman who knows she’s in it for the long run.