The Rage Over Another Massacre – And What To Do With It

The NRA and friends got this much power through a combination of anger and patience. Their opponents may need to do the same.
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Lots of people are feeling rage over Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. On Wednesday, former Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke let out a little of that rage when he barged into a press conference by Greg Abbott, the Republican governor, and started yelling. “You’re doing nothing,” O’Rourke said. “You’re all doing nothing.”

It’s a reasonable accusation to throw at Abbott, who recently signed laws rolling back Texas’ already-minimal gun safety laws and took to Twitter a few years ago to bemoan the fact that Texans had fallen behind Californians in total firearm purchases. “Let’s pick up the pace Texans,” he tweeted at the time.

But O’Rourke’s display was also an expression of the frustration that many Americans – not just Democrats – feel at going through this awful ritual again.

Absolutely nothing that transpired this week in Texas was surprising. Mass shootings happen all the time in the U.S. And when killers aren’t gunning down their victims by the dozen, they’re doing so one or two at a time ― at home and in the workplace, behind storefronts and on the streets. The Robb Elementary shooting was actually the 27th school shooting this year, which works out to about one every six days, according to Education Week.

This is a uniquely American phenomenon, at least among economically advanced countries. No peer nation makes it so easy to have a gun. None rivals the U.S. for years of life lost to firearms. Every new tragedy brings a new spasm of outrage and yet, somehow, the laws don’t change.

Are there prospects for some kind of action this time? Even something modest? Maybe, though it probably involves a lot of work and a lot of time – and, yes, maybe some anger, too.

Congress Seems Unlikely To Help

Tuesday’s killings prompted new calls for action, which in the context of U.S. politics means enacting relatively modest measures like strengthening background checks or so-called “red flag” laws that take guns out of the hands of people likely to cause harm.

It’s certainly possible one of those proposals will become law. Nineteen dead schoolchildren can be a powerful motivator.

But it wasn’t powerful enough a decade ago when the toll was 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary. That tragedy also provoked outrage, grief and calls to act. Congress responded by putting together a background check bill, only to have the measure fail in the Senate.

It’s important to be clear about how that vote went down. Democrats had the majority and nearly all of their members backed the measure. But that wasn’t enough because Senate filibuster rules mean most legislation requires 60 votes to pass and, with only four Republicans voting yes, the proposal came up short.

The political situation today is strikingly similar.

Democratic majorities in Congress would support new gun laws, but they can’t get to the 60-vote threshold because Republicans won’t vote for it ― as HuffPosters Jennifer Bendery, Igor Bobic and Arthur Delaney confirmed today with their reporting.

And while most Democratic senators would be willing to junk the filibuster, making it possible for the Democrats to pass laws on their own, they would need full unanimity in their caucus. They don’t have it.

The Supreme Court Could Make Things Worse

So the chances of new legislation passing are slim. But that’s not the most perverse part of the political outlook.

It’s quite possible that the next few weeks will bring a major shift in gun regulation ― one that actually leaves the country’s already weak gun laws even weaker than they are now.

The reason is the Supreme Court, which is about to rule on a case that hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves. It’s about a New York law that requires you to get a permit if you want to carry a gun in public ― and requires you to demonstrate a real need for self-defense if you want to get that permit.

Laws like this have been around for a long while; New York’s dates back more than a century. But it’s facing a legal challenge that got a sympathetic hearing from the Court’s conservative majority in November. If they rule against the New York law, it could put a whole bunch of other gun safety laws into legal jeopardy ― and, over time, wipe them off the books.

A Mix Of Patience And Anger

One reason enthusiasts for gun rights achieved so much is that they kept at it, even when the prospects seemed bleak. In a decades-long campaign that scholars Reva Siegel and Michael Waldman later documented, gun right champions kept pushing to change public minds, to develop substantive arguments and ultimately to put like-minded people into power.

That’s probably what it’s going to take in order to put new gun safety measures into place – although advocates for these measures face an extra burden, because they have to reform the government itself. The familiar structural advantages that benefit conservatives, because of their geographic distribution and over-representation in the Senate and Electoral College, also help the champions of gun rights.

The work of undoing these advantages has already begun, as have the efforts to enact new gun safety laws. It’s not easy to see or appreciate right now, but the constellation of groups pushing these causes are bigger and more active than it was ten years ago, after Sandy Hook – in no small part because the tragedies really have stirred people to act, and gotten the attention of some big funders too.

But it takes energy to sustain those efforts, as well as a sense of hope. And hope is in conspicuously short supply at moments like these – which is why displays like O’Rourke’s can also make a difference. They validate feelings of frustration, and demonstrate that leaders aren’t giving up.

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