In
2010, there were eleven thousand gun
homicides in the United States. In Japan, there were eleven.
Not eleven thousand, eleven. On January 16, 2013, in response
to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and other national
tragedies, President Obama announced a plan for improving the
control of firearms in the United States and providing greater
access to mental health services. The plan included proposals
for new laws to be passed by Congress, as well as a series of
executive actions not requiring Congressional approval. On
Wednesday, April 17th, the U.S. Senate rejected bipartisan gun
safety legislation, despite a multi-million dollar campaign and
emotional pleas from the Sandy Hook victims, due to
Republican-led opposition and threat of filibuster. “All in all,
this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” an angry Obama
said of the vote, adding the effort, “is not over.” Yes it is,
and he knows it. It’s over, at least for now.
It is worth noting the legislation, by Democrat Joe Manchin of
West Virginia and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania,
actually passed 54-46 in the Senate, but was dropped not because
it lacked the votes to pass but that it lacked the votes to
overcome a threatened Republican-led filibuster. It takes 60 votes to overrule a Senate filibuster (called a “cloture vote”),
which, specifically in the Age of Obama (the age of the first
black president) has repeatedly undermined our constitutional
liberties by ending majority rule in this country. Once
considered extreme, Senate filibusters ware rarely invoked, used
an average of 7 times per Congressional session in the 1960s,
once or twice per session before then. Since Obama’s swearing
in, no Democrat has filibustered any Senate bill. Republicans,
however, have filibustered virtually every bill, some 252 times
in the 11th and 112th Congress (source: U.S. Senate Action on
Cloture Motions). A filibuster once required a senator to
actually stand there talking non-stop, without rest or food or
even a bathroom break, in order to prevent a vote on a bill. The
new, inexplicably stupid “modern” rule, however, is any senator
can merely invoke the *rules* of filibuster—without actually
having to even show up in the well of the Senate—and, until he
or she releases the bill from that rule (or the Senate comes up
with 60 votes to end the filibuster), the bill cannot proceed to
a vote.
I’m not sure who thought that rule up or even how it passes
constitutional scrutiny, but the way the Senate now handles the
filibuster rule has changed the very nature of democracy in this
country. The Senate’s lack of will to act on even the
half-a-loaf gun safety legislation (the only meaningful
provision required “universal” background checks for gun
purchases) cast a deeply shameful pall on an already disgraced
institution.
The main reason the timid and mostly useless gun safety
legislation failed is the nation’s distrust of the federal
government’s integrity and competency, a distrust both proven
and fed by the very same politicians who obstructed this gun
legislation. The wave of distrust, once limited only to
extremists, has been reinforced repeatedly by Republican
extremists who pander to the build-your-own-still crowd while
mocking them at the same time. This nation’s history proves all
politicians play toward mob rule and can only be arm-twisted
into taking a stand by being either bribed with political gets
or granted safe harbor and political cover by a third party.
Most all historically meaningful legislation every passing
through this nation’s legislature has had to overcome the
ignorant superstition and fear of those least-informed among us,
a group politicians both liberal and conservative pander to in
order to keep their jobs. It is, historically, the stupid
people, the fearful people, the low information people, the
soccer moms trapped in their Barney The Dinosaur / Mommy and Me
snow globes, the tattooed rednecks storing up AR-15’s and ammo,
who form the groundswell of public opinion. The percentage of
blacks and Asians among this crowd is near-imperceptible. These
are, for the most part, low-information, lower-income whites
whose public perception is often shaped much more by fear than
by hope. These are the Sarah Palins, the Michele Bachmanns,
clinging to their guns and religion. This is the group that sits
in the way of any good our nation’s legislature may ever do, who
have opposed civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, gun
safety, health reform, farming legislation—all in the name of
Jesus and country. This is the crowd every legislator must wade
into, hip deep, in order to get even common-sense legislation
like background checks done.
These are the people pols like Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell are beholden to, as this Old Rich White Man who dines
most every night in splendor and golfs and exclusive country
clubs, pretends to be one of. “I’m one of you.” McConnell and
phonies like him, cranky Arizona Senator John McCain among them,
pander to these people for whom they demonstrate an obvious
contempt at the same time. In order to keep their jobs, these
guys stand in the way of doing what’s right, obstructing and
demagoging, stuck on the wrong side of history time and time
again. And they know it. I presume they drink themselves to
sleep at night over some of the hateful, destructive and
pandering votes they’ve cast. These men and women have a clear
record of placing politics ahead of public policy and are, by
that record, clearly more concerned with keeping their jobs than
they are with actually doing any good or getting anything done
in Washington.
Most of the nation who’d actually finished high school truly
believed the Newton shootings would be the tipping point. We
were perfectly content to ignore the 300-500 shooting deaths
annually in places like Pittsburg and Chicago because those were
black teens and young men and it was all likely drug related so
good riddance. But most thinking, thoughtful people certainly
presumed twenty dead first and second graders and six dead
teachers, mostly white, killed by the hand of a deranged white
man, would have some meaningful impact on public policy.
Instead, as usual, our legislators ran for cover, first watering
the bill down to virtually nothing, then threatening to
filibuster the nothing, then dropping the bill not because it
lacked the votes but because Republicans, specifically, would
block it from even coming up for one.
This is a desperately sad and shameful time in our nation’s history. What’s even more shameful is that this business will be long-forgotten by November 2014, when many of these same cowards will easily and effortlessly be reelected.
