Sen. Chris Murphy: “America Has Become Numb to Violence”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You know, from reading the book, it’s clear that you see a sort of violent gene that has impacted American history from the beginning. And it’s extraordinary actually that it’s coming out now as we see to an extent this playing out on the streets of the United States with an election, a determinative election, on the horizon. How does this play into what’s going on right now, in your view?

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Well, thanks for having me on the show. And yes, we are having a renewed reckoning with American violence. For much of the last seven years, we’ve been talking about this issue predominantly through the personal of mass shootings, but now we’re watching these horrific scenes of black men being shot in the back or killed by a police officer putting a knee on their neck. This book, I hope, will provide some answers for people as to why America became this violent. For me, my exploration did start after that brutal murder, the massacre in Sandy Hook, and this book in some ways sort of tries to tell the story of my education to the readers, and, you know, the conclusion I come to is that, yes, there is a genetic code inside all of us that means humans as a species are going to be predisposed towards violence, but then there’s this unique history in the United States dating all the way back to the settlement of the country when we were massacring native Americans through the period of enslavement to Jim Crow to today where America has become numb to violence. Violence has been used since the very beginning in order to sort of reinforce a racial caste system, and while it’s different today than it was when we had millions of Americans enslaved, still to this day, America has become anesthetized to violence in a way that few other nations are. And my book is a history of that violence but then also an examination of the ways in which we can do better. It’s a complicated story, which also means it’s a complicated set of prescriptions. It’s not just about changing gun laws, it’s also about recognizing that if you don’t change the economic order in this country, then you’re not giving a lot of folks’ pathway to success other than violence.