Sen. Chris Murphy: NRA stance a ruse to sell guns

WASHINGTON — The shooting deaths of five police officers in Dallas has mostly played out as a racial-divide issue, with an African-American shooter — an Army Reserve veteran — motivated by hatred of whites and white police officers.

But now the gun issue also has come to the forefront. Officers and others have pointed to the Texas open-carry law as thwarting the Dallas police response when shots were fired.

And on Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., leader of last month’s gun-law filibuster effort, took to the Senate floor to condemn the “guns-everywhere” philosophy that underpins much of the National Rifle Association’s responses to mass shootings — dating back to the days after Newtown when NRA chief Wayne LaPierre declared “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

“This isn’t true,” Murphy said. “It has never been true. It will never be true.”

Murphy has emerged as a gun control — or gun-violence prevention — leader among Democrats in the Senate, holding the Senate floor for nearly 15 hours to force votes on expanding gun-purchase background checks and preventing terror suspects from buying guns.

“It is quite simply an invention designed by the gun industry to sell more guns,” Murphy said. The claim is “simply an invention designed by the gun industry to sell more guns to convince Americans that laws and rules cannot protect them, that the only thing that can keep them safe is to buy expensive weapons and ammunition that pad the profits of the big gun companies.”