WASHINGTON -- Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), after pleading on the Senate floor for nearly 15 hours for Congress to do something about America's mass murder epidemic, saved his best for last.
With the clock ticking to 2 a.m. Thursday, the senator, who took office less than a month after Adam Lanza slaughtered 20 children and six adults in Sandy Hook Elementary School four years ago, looked back at one of the most poignant acts in that tragedy.
It was the courageous moment when a teacher wrapped her arms around a 6-year-old boy with autism to try to spare him any more horror in their last awful moments.
“Anne Marie Murphy found Dylan Hockley and embraced him,” Murphy said. “You know why we know that? Because when the police entered the classroom, that’s how they found Dylan Hockley, dead, wrapped in the embrace of Anne Marie Murphy.”
“It doesn’t take courage to stand here on the floor of the United States Senate for two hours or six hours or 14 hours. It doesn’t take courage to stand up to the gun lobby when 90 percent of your constituents want change to happen,” Murphy said. “It takes courage to look into the eye of a shooter and instead of running, wrapping your arms around a 6-year-old boy and accepting death as a trade for just a tiny, little, itty piece of increased peace of mind for a little boy under your charge.”
“If Anne Marie Murphy could do that, then ask yourself what can you do to make sure that Orlando or Sandy Hook never, ever happens again?” Murphy said, before he yielded the floor after 14 hours and 50 minutes.
But before he left, he said leaders had promised him at least two votes on gun bills.
Watch Murphy's final plea above.