MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Chris Murphy

Interview

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MADDOW: Ahead of last year`s midterm elections, the senator tried  something new. Senator Murphy launched what was called the NR8 campaign.  It`s supposed to kind of sound like NRA. It was an effort to raise money  for eight specific Democratic candidates. Seven in the house, one in the  senate, and all eight of these candidates were taking on Republican  incumbents who had A ratings from the NRA. It was a campaign specifically  for those eight Democratic candidates. All eight of those candidates won,  all eight of them. The seven lawmakers on the house side who won are now  part of the new Democratic majority.

Next week that new Democratic majority will introduce a bill for, you  guessed it, universal background checks to buy a gun. But it will do so  with the help of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. The bill will be  named H.R. 8 because it will be introduced on the eight-year anniversary of  the shooting that almost took the life of Congresswoman Giffords and a  shooting that killed six of her constituents.

The Democratic majority will introduce that in the House this upcoming  week, and on his side of the Capitol, Senator Chris Murphy will also try  again.

Joining us now is Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut whose own bill on  background checks he is ready to reintroduce.

Sir, I appreciate you joining us tonight. Thank you for being here.

MURPHY: Yes, thanks for having me.

MADDOW: So, I want to ask you, we`ve talked about this issue broadly.  We`ve talked about the background checks issue specifically a number of  times over the years. I wonder if you feel like the window is shifting at  all, the window of what`s possible and what can be reasonably discussed  with an eye towards actually getting somewhere with the Democrats taking  control of the House.

MURPHY: I got sworn in to Congress for my second term to the Senate this  week, and I`m furious that six years after I got sworn in right after the  shooting in Sandy Hook, we still haven`t made any meaningful progress. But  that belies the transformation that has happened in the American electorate  over that time, this is now an issue that you have to run on, background  checks, bans on assault weapons if you want to win seats in the United  States Congress.

And so, you see this new wave of Democratic freshmen who unapologetically  enthusiastically went out there and ran on these issues and won. You see a  race like Georgia`s sixth which was the epicenter of the political world  right after Trump`s election. John Ossoff lost, having frankly stayed away  from the gun issue. Two years later, Lucy McBath, whose son was killed in  gun violence, ran on the issue and won, a swing district. As you mentioned  the eight races we targeted won as well.

It used to be that guns turned out Republicans in general elections.  That`s not how it works any longer. Exit polls show from last November  that of the voters who said guns was their number one issue, 70 percent of  those voters were Democrats, not Republicans.

And so, if Republicans want to win back the House of Representatives,  they`ve got to start voting for things like background checks that have a  97 percent approval rating. And I would argue to my colleagues in the 
Senate that if they don`t get right on this issue right now, this year when they have the chance, that they`re not going to control the Senate for long either.

MADDOW: Well, let me ask you about that, the strategic dynamics at work  here. I noted that the NR8, as that effort was titled, was essentially a  reference to the NRA. I noted in my introduction that even NRA members are  among the vast majority of Americans who support universal background  checks.

The NRA has been such an important part of how we understand who the  adversary is on this policy issue that otherwise is so popular with the  American people. The NRA today, however, is in a very different position  than they were even a year ago. I mean, most troublingly, they have been  implicated in certain ways in Russian government efforts to influence our  elections.

There are important questions I think about whether NRA financing  potentially has been used as some sort of Trojan horse for foreign  government financing, making its way into U.S. elections. The NRA  financially as an organization is crying poverty and saying that they don`t  have the resources that they used to, and indeed, in these elections, we  saw their spending fall off a cliff.

Do you think they are significantly weakened as an organization? And do  you think that`s going to make a difference in this fight?

MURPHY: So their power was always reputational. It wasn`t actually  practical, right? The NRA has always been a bit of a paper tiger.  Everybody sort of has this mythology about the 1994 Republican sweep. They  attribute Democratic losses to the vote on the background checks bill and  the assault weapons bill, and the NRA spending lots of money to get those  Democrats out of office.

That`s not actually how the `94 election played out. In fact, if you look  at the NRA`s endorsements, they lose a lot more race than they win. And  so, Republicans have always had outsized fear of the NRA than reality would  have it.

But you are right. The NRA is a shell of themselves. Today, they are  financially in deep trouble, maybe because one of their primary sponsors  and funders was a foreign government, but also because they simply are  hemorrhaging dues and members.

But they are also upside down in the approval rating polls for the first  time. It used to be by and large people thought better of the NRA. Their  approval ratings outstripped their disapproval ratings. Not so any longer.  If you are an NRA-backed candidate in a swing congressional district, you  are in trouble in a way that you weren`t before.

So, again, NRA has always been trumped up a bit in their political power,  but they are simply much, much weaker today, and we are much, much stronger  today.

MADDOW: Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, I really appreciate you  making time to be here on a Friday night, sir. Thank you for joining us.  Much appreciated.

MURPHY: Thanks, Rachel.

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