Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (D) is painting a bleak picture of gun violence in America, calling it a “dystopia that we’ve chosen for ourselves.”
His comments came during a Senate floor speech in Washington on Wednesday that addressed various high-profile shootings across the U.S.
“We are becoming a heavily armed nation so fearful and angry and hair-trigger anxious that gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations,” Murphy said during the speech. “This is a dystopia, and I’m here to tell you that it’s a dystopia that we’ve chosen for ourselves.”
“There is a toxic mixture in this country today of hate, of anger, and a population that is increasingly armed to the teeth with deadly weapons — many of them with no training, many of them with criminal records,” Murphy said. “This mixture is leading to our neighborhoods becoming killing fields.”
“Minor slights and indiscretions, small arguments, even simple wrong turns are becoming potentially deadly,” Murphy said.
The senator added that he recently spoke with a detective in Bridgeport, a city in his state, who told him that police rarely respond to fistfights anymore, as they now see shootings instead.
“Everything, every beef ends up in gunfire,” Murphy said. “We’ve lost so many pathways in this country to positive meaning and positive identity and fulfilling connection to each other.”