Chris Murphy: Why on Earth Do You Have to Go Through More Paperwork in this Country to Own a Dog than an Assault Weapon?

COOPER: “It’s interesting, I mean, earlier, when asked directly what we can do to make sure this doesn‘t happen again, the Minneapolis police chief said he he didn‘t have an answer. What do you — I mean, what do you point to in that 2022 legislation that you think worked?”
MURPHY:: “Well, one thing we did, as I mentioned, is that we, you know, essentially required young people under the age of 21 to go through a really rigorous background check and a waiting period before they got their hands on a weapon. Now, we‘re learning all the facts here, but it does look like this individual bought the guns shortly before they carried out this crime. And so waiting periods, training, licensure on all weapons, that makes it a lot harder for somebody who is in crisis to run out and get a weapon and commit a crime like this. So, we‘ve seen that just being more careful and more rigorous before you transfer a gun to somebody, you know, that makes sense. I mean, why on earth do you have to go through more paperwork in this country to own a dog than an assault weapon? What we also know is that wrapping services around youth in particular, that are at risk, that works. One of the things we did in that bill in 2022 was we put a lot of money on the ground to look at kids whose lives were falling apart, to look at groups of kids who were trending toward violent behavior, and we put services and supports around them, and we saw urban violence go down all across the country. So it‘s not a matter of not knowing what works. We actually know what works: keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people, more rigorous training, waiting periods and more support services in our communities and in our schools. That works.”