Bipartisan Gun Reform Falls Short

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

On May 24, 2022, a gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, firing over 100 rounds of ammunition. Nineteen students and two teachers were murdered, the majority of the victims being under the age of 12. Ten-year-old Rojelio Torres’s mother told ABC News that her son’s death made her feel as though she had “lost a piece of her heart.” Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, age 10, had just won her school’s “good citizen” award hours before she was ruthlessly shot. The New York Times reported it was not only the deadliest shooting America has seen in a decade, but one of over 250 mass shootings reported this year. 

We have seen this same story unfold too many times now. Tragedies such as the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, the Pulse nightclub, Marjorie Stone Douglas High School, and at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York only a week prior to Uvalde have left Americans reeling time and time again. Our democracy is deeply broken, and we need to reform procedures such as the filibuster to prevent progressive policies from being continuously blocked. There is more than enough research to show that mass shootings are preventable. Everytown, an organization dedicated to gun safety, reports that the perpetrators of mass shootings are often someone who has been legally prohibited from possessing a firearm, someone who showed prior warning signs or involvement in incidents of domestic violence, and that mass shootings are far deadlier when they involve assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Universal background checks are an evidence-based solution to preventing those who have been legally prohibited from owning a gun from obtaining one, but in 29 states these people are able to circumvent background checks by purchasing guns from an unlicensed seller. “Red flag” laws, or laws that would allow loved ones to petition the court to temporarily prohibit those displaying warning signs from obtaining a gun, but as of 2021, only 19 states have enacted this type of legislation. Assault weapons have been shown to kill six times the number of people in a related incident where an assault weapon was not used, yet there has still yet to be federal legislation on an assault weapon ban since President Clinton’s ban expired in 2004. 

Mass shootings are not the only form of gun violence that threatens our nation. Everyday gun violence haunts the streets of our cities and perpetuates cycles of deep, generational trauma that often goes unnoticed by the media. From 2019 to 2020, there was a 33 percent increase in gun homicides. In many of the same ways that common sense gun legislation such as red flag laws can prevent mass shootings, it can also reduce daily gun violence. Recently, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which includes enhanced background checks for gun sales that would look further into the mental health status and domestic abuse history of the potential buyer as well as funding for states to enact red flag laws. However, this is a far cry from the Protecting Our Kids Act passed by the House, which would have raised the minimum age to own an assault weapon from 18 to 21, pass a federal red flag law, and ban high capacity magazines. The Senate’s bipartisan compromise is a sneer toward the countless families that have endured the loss of a loved one to gun violence when a federal assault weapons ban, among other more powerful legislation, is necessary. 

When the solution seems so clear, we must ask what is preventing Congress from passing such necessary legislation? America stands in a peculiar position, as other developed countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have been able to successfully pass gun control legislation after similar horrific mass shooting incidents. In fact, there has been no school shootings in Britain since 1996, when a gunman murdered 16 students at a primary school spurring a lasting ban on assault weapons and mandatory registration for shotgun owners. In America, the looming influence of the nation’s most powerful gun lobby group, the National Rifle Association, serves as one major reason. The NRA has launched an immensely powerful campaign over the past few decades to shift American views around the Second Amendment. Rather than its original intent at the time of ratification in the eighteenth century, which was to restrict the federal government’s role in state-run militias, the NRA portrayed the amendment as a right for each individual to bear arms. Under the shield of the almighty Second Amendment, Republicans have been able to thwart any form of common sense gun legislation. 

Legal researcher Carl T. Bogus outlined in a 2000 law review article that from the 1800s to the 1960s, most courts and legal scholars viewed the Second Amendment under the collective right model, which the Constitution only protected the right to bear arms within the militia, not individually. However, the individual rights model, which was born out of the efforts of the NRA, gained traction in the late twentieth century and raised the right to bear arms to the same level as other fundamental civil liberties including the right to free speech. The NRA capitalized on a time of immensely growing distrust in the government following Watergate and the Vietnam War and convinced Americans that the government was trying to take away their guns, which they tied to the core American identity of freedom. 

However, the tide is changing, and this new generation of students plagued by the collective grief and trauma left behind by school shootings have the potential to make lasting change. The Pew Research Center reports that over 85 percent of Americans support background checks, over 70 percent support red flag laws, and over 60 percent support bans on assault-style weapons. While the divisive opinions between Democrat and Republican voters on gun policies cause some obstacles in passing gun legislation, even when the majority of Americans agree on a certain piece of legislation, the Senate filibuster allows the minority to override what the majority of Americans may think. In fact, the power of the Senate is what blocked the implementation of the Protecting Our Kids Act. It is also dangerous for the minority to have such great power because many mass shootings are the result of shooters being able to access firearms in states with loose gun restrictions. In order to adequately address the public’s desire to prevent these tragedies from occurring, we must combat the ills of our democracy and weaken the power of the filibuster.  Politicians such as voting rights activist Stacy Abrams are already beginning to imagine what this would look like. She argues that certain legislation crucial to the foundation of our democracy, including the right to vote, should be exempt from the filibuster. Proponents of common sense gun legislation could also utilize the “nuclear option,” a parliamentary procedure used in the past by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, which can be used to change Senate rules with only a simple majority vote. This is just the beginning of public discourse on reforming the filibuster, and for the sake of our democracy, hopefully the future holds a more efficient conceptualization of this outdated procedure.