Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has been one of the loudest voices shrieking that Congress must “do something” in the wake of tragedy. Mass shootings are often followed by a slew of gun control proposals, none of which would have prevented the tragedy currently being exploited for the pre-existing gun control agenda. Murphy, like many elected officials in Washington, appears to suffer from the magical thinking that as a legislator he can literally alter reality itself.

The hard truth is that he can’t, but he still issued this irresponsible statement  in response to the Las Vegas mass shooting.

“It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic,” the Connecticut Democratic senator said in a statement released Monday.

“There are, and the thoughts and prayers of politicians are cruelly hollow if they are paired with continued legislative indifference. It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”

The emotionally charged statement is chock full of fallacies and false premises. It is quite clear that the only people he hopes to influence are those who react from visceral emotion without analyzing the available data objectively. That is always a recipe for doing exactly the wrong thing in any given situation.

To my colleagues: your cowardice to act cannot be whitewashed by thoughts and prayers.

None of this ends unless we do something to stop it.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 2, 2017

Murphy says those who disagree with his position on gun control are “afraid of the gun industry.” That is not dissimilar from the Saul Alinsky tactics employed by Hillary Clinton earlier today. He is falsely ascribing cowardice as the motive for a political position. He doesn’t even display a willingness to acknowledge that his opponents disagree with him. He is implying that fear is preventing them from doing something they know to be right. It would be insulting if it came from someone who wasn’t such a worm.

I would never say that Senator Murphy was so afraid of the abortion lobby that he pretends that the “epidemic” of butchering unborn children under the guise of healthcare doesn’t deserve a public policy response. I take him at his word that he actually believes that as part of his personal moral philosophy. I don’t assume that he is afraid of Planned Parenthood or NARAL. He believes what they believe. The people who voted for Murphy believe it as well, or are at least willing to tolerate it in exchange for some other item on their left wing wish list.

Murphy won’t even admit that there are Americans who believe that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed and concocts a tall tale about a fearsome gun industry intimidating his Congressional colleagues. You can draw your own conclusions as to what Murphy is implying about the voters who elected those now supposedly cowering before Smith and Wesson.

I will still say that Murphy is himself a coward though because he is obviously afraid to entertain the idea that there are valid opinions other than his own. If not a coward, then he is at least a bigot in the Chestertonian sense. G.K. Chesterton defined bigotry as “an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.” He also wrote, “It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.” 

Murphy’s grandstanding certainly meets that definition perfectly. I judge him a coward primarily because I believe that bigotry is always born of cowardice. If he is not a coward the only alternatives are worse things.

The rest of the statement also illustrates the excessive smallness of Senator Chris Murphy.

“Epidemic” is a word used often by Democrats when talking about mass shootings. They seldom use it when they—very rarely—address the ongoing daily violence occurring in America’s cities which are run almost exclusively by Murphy’s own party. The phrase “legislative indifference” is yet another dishonest ploy to deflect the very idea that anyone else might have an opinion worth considering.

To all those political opportunists who are seizing on the tragedy in Las Vegas to call for more gun regs…You can't regulate evil…

— Governor Matt Bevin (2015-2019) (@GovMattBevin) October 2, 2017

I await your proposal to rescind Kentucky's laws banning assault, murder and arson.

One of government's core functions is to regulate evil. https://t.co/5cTwYts2bq

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 2, 2017

You don’t regulate evil. You punish evil after it occurs. No law enacted anywhere ever prevented assault, murder, or arson. We have an overcrowded prison system full of people who don’t give a damn about what laws are on the books.

The thing about evil is that it cares as much about laws and regulations as Chris Murphy cares about honesty and common sense.

Despite his cowardice and bigotry, the tiny demagogue somehow still has the chutzpah to suggest that Congress has the ability to prevent evil if only it would “get off its ass.” All he is doing is once again trying to leverage fear and grief to advance his misguided anti-gun agenda.

Senator Murphy, propose a law that will 1) prevent unpredictable acts of evil and 2) respects individuals’ second amendment rights. I suspect you can’t. I also suspect that you only really care about one of those criteria. I’ll at least entertain the notion that I might be wrong about that though.