Dem. Senator: Threatening to Nullify Fed Gun Laws Is Like Opposing Desegregation

Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy said Monday that opponents of stricter gun laws will probably be remembered by history the same way those who opposed desegregation are remembered today.

“I mean, let's look at the context of nullification,” the Connecticut senator said in response to a question regarding states that have threatened to nullify proposed federal gun laws.

“Nullification was last used by Southern states to try to eviscerate Civil Rights legislation, to try to prevent states from basically enforcing desegregation and frankly, I think history will look back on this round of nullification as kindly as it did on the last round,” he added.

He continued, explaining to Maddow his views on the Second Amendment:

It is laughable also because it is a total bastardization of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is not an absolute right, not a God given right, always had conditions upon it like the First Amendment has. The idea that the Second Amendment was put in there in order to allow citizens to fight their government is insane.

If that was the case, we wouldn't have also included treason in the United States Constitution. We basically said if you take arms up against the government, we're going to knock your block off. And that's what the early presidents ended up doing in Shays' Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion. The Second Amendment is not designed to allow the citizenry to arm itself against the government and nullification is another example of states not really understanding the true nature of that amendment.

Watch Sen. Murphy’s comments here:

Sen. Murphy isn’t the first person to tie the gun control debate to segregation.

Indeed, Tom Brokaw in January compared those not taking a stronger stand on guns to those who silently opposed segregation in the 1960s:

…it reminds me a lot of what happened in the South in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Good people stayed in their houses and didn't speak up when there was carnage in the streets and the total violation of a fundamental rights of African-Americans as they marched in Selma, and they let Bull Connor and the redneck elements of the South and the Klan take over their culture in effect and become of face of it.

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(H/T: WZ). Featured image Getty Images.