Senator Murphy Returns to Connecticut, Fights for Votes

More than 36 hours after the ninth longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history, Senator Chris Murphy returned to Connecticut to attend a vigil in Torrington for the sole victim of the Orlando nightclub shooting from Connecticut.

"It pains me that I’m going to another vigil and I’m sure there will be lots more," Murphy said as he arrived at Bradley International Airport.

During the Senate delay started by Murphy, he said negotiations took place with Senate Republican leaders who hold the majority to schedule votes on measures aimed at expanding background checks and barring anyone on a terror watch list from purchasing guns.

According to the New York Times, some senators are expecting a party-line vote on the measures, slated for votes next Monday.

Murphy said he's not sold that the amendments and bills are dead before they even reach the Senate floor.

"I just don’t buy this defeatist attitude that just because this is a controversial issue we should stop working on it, that we should stop voting on it," he said.

"The fact is every great change movement has had a lot of obstacles and have occasionally had a lot of failures along the way, but to the people who say that you shouldn’t even try, you shouldn’t even have a debate because there are a lot of people opposed to what you’re doing, that’s ridiculous. You can’t give up.”

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, sharply responded to the filibuster that at one point or another included 40 different senators. He said the effort is an unvarnished effort at restricting gun rights.

"We shouldn’t be engaging in a side show of gun control," Cruz said. "It wasn’t the NRA who set up pressure cookers in the Boston bombing. It wasn’t the NRA who murder 14 innocent soldiers in Fort Hood—and it is offensive to play a political game."

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