You Can't Address Mass Shooting in a Broken No-Trust Political Culture
Calls for Federal Action Are Pointless in the Current Political Environment
Another school shooting rocked the nation on Tuesday, this time occurring in Uvalde, Texas leaving twenty-one dead including nineteen students. It’s yet another tragedy.
Twitter is filled with conversation and there’s a clear consensus that something must be done, in the face of school shootings and not all these are the usual parade of left-wingers like Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) but also many Republicans and many ordinary Americans tired of endless bloodshed in school shooting after school shooting. David French has made sensible call for “red flag” laws that would allow guns to be taken away from individuals who have shown “red flags” of being a potential mass shooter pending a court hearing to determine their mental fitness.
These calls are for not. Nothing will happen. Of course, progressives will blame the NRA and right-wing Republicans for their callousness and heartlessness. But truth be told, the anti-gun crusaders’ bad faith approach to the issue and a broken political system make addressing school shootings unworkable.
Anatomy of a Bad Faith Approach
What do I mean by the approach of progressive being in bad faith? The push for more gun control is a political agenda item that began before school shootings really emerged in the 1990s. After the first big school shootings in places like Jonesboro, Paducah, and Columbine, the call for more gun control would begin a day or so after the shooting. By the end of the Obama Administration, Obama wasn’t even waiting until the bodies were cold.
This was not only unseemly, it often met that progressives were calling for gun control without knowing the facts. In many cases, existing gun laws had been violated and not enforced making the passage of new ones pointless. Oftentimes, the laws proposed wouldn’t prevent the tragedies they’re responding to as French explains
So when we talk about common gun control proposals after mass shootings—whether we’re referring to expanded background checks, assault weapons bans, or limits on magazine capacity—the general rule is that none of those measures, even if implemented, would have actually prevented any recent mass shooting.
So in the case of most gun control proposals, you’re only burdening law-abiding gun owners without actually doing anything to prevent another shooting. It’s as if guns were used to do something very bad and gun owners must be punished to appease the gods to prevent other shootings.
It doesn’t matter if it’s not particularly effective, we owe it to the victims to do something in order to bring meaning to chaos even if what we’re doing is just an empty gesture that makes us feel like we’re doing something and we’re in control.
There are numerous “somethings” you could do that don’t involving unnecessary regulations on guns:
Many shooters commit their acts because of the notoriety. Media organizations feed on this by revealing the names of shooters, covering them extensively probing their childhood. Media organizations could “do something” by not covering them. Some individual journalists have taken this stance but it’s a scant minority. Professional media organizations could take this stand and sanction any journalists who do anything else.
Distance Learning: One advantage of distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic is that it avoided school shootings. By going full-time distance learning, students and teachers would be safe not only from infectious disease but from armed assassins.
Limit access to the Internet for minors. We won’t let kids drive on the regular highways until their sixteen, why do we let thirteen-year-olds have unfettered access to all the knowledge of mankind? There are too many dark holes kids can fall into, too many bad influences.. Parents can’t hope to keep up. Require an Internet passport to go online other than to select educational sites for children under sixteen and limit access for sixteen and seventeen year olds so that they can only get online if an adult with a valid passport is sitting next to them.
If two isn’t implemented than go full TSA in public schools: metal detectors, removing shoes, putting backpacks on a bag to be scanned. Increase school security to the level of a maximum-security prison.
Require all 5-12 grade students to undergo quarterly psychiatric evaluations. If medication is indicated based on their mental health condition, taking the medication will be a requirement for continuing to be allowed to attend school. Usage will be confirmed by weekly blood tests.
Now, I’m not in favor of all these ideas, but you have to agree that they all would do something about school shootings and far more than ineffectual hobby horse gun laws that get brought up. Of course, most would present major inconveniences to innocent parties, but if it’s worth doing the burden on gun owners to save lives, than saving lives makes it worth doing it to others as well.
The problem is advocates of gun control don’t have a very unnuanced view of firearms ownership. A left-wing friend put it best on Twiter, “Guns are evil!”
If guns are evil than gun ownership is also evil and you can understand why gun owners don’t trust progressives to respect their rights. Why not pass “reasonable” gun legislation is a fair question. The answer is that there’s a feeling the regulation wouldn’t work and that it would only be the start of more demands.
If “Guns are evil” than gun control advocates aren’t going to settle for “common-sense” gun control laws. Imagine that in reaction to the horrific shootings, a bill requiring universal background checks passed. If a school shooting occurred a few months later, do you think gun control advocates likes Senator Murphy would conclude a) the law hadn’t been given enough time to work or b) demand more laws and ignore the fact one was just passed. If you guessed a, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
This isn’t to say gun rights advocates are innocent. There are some foolish gun rights advocates who engage in provocative “own the libs” tactics like open carry. I also think that there should be more openness to red flag laws. However, there’s a not entirely unjustified fear that progressives would try to use the laws to seize guns from political opponents. For example by arguing that having had a Trump sign in your yard in the last election is a “red flag.”
What A Real Compromise Would Like…And Why We Won’t Get It
What would need to happen for any legislation to prevent mass shootings is to bring everyone together around the table: the Republicans, the Democrats, the Brady Campaign, and the NRA.
There would have to be a willingness to give a little to get a little. While they might view each other’s core proposals as non-sensical they would need to indulge each other.
For the NRA and the Republicans, this would mean agreeing to a Red Flag law with protections from political discrimination and harassment along with one or two other minor gun control proposals such as universal background checks.
Democrats and gun control groups would also have to consider Republican concerns. It’s popular on the left to mock the idea of “good guys with guns” preventing or stopping mass shootings even though it has happened. Just as the right would have to be willing to allow measures, it didn’t think effective, the left would acknowledge that “good guys with a gun” do make a difference allow federal funds for a training program where schools, churches, and businesses could send non-security personnel for psychological evaluation and training in stopping an active shooter event. In addition, there would be a need for more money for the enforcement of new and existing gun laws. Finally, a federal multi-partisan commission would be created to make recommendations to the state and federal government for addressing non-firearms related causes of mass shootings such as mental health and family stability.
In addition, there would to be assurances that the laws would be given a chance to work. The left would want to see new gun regulations go into effect and the right would want to be assured there wouldn’t be another bill dropped in two or three months.
This could be met by the RNC endorsing the law, and the NRA agreeing to advocate for the law in any court challenge, while both houses could implement rules that if this bill was passed any further gun control regulation would be out of order for the next five years. Finally, the Brady Campaign would agree to disband for the next four years since there would be no legislation to pursue.
The reason this won’t happen? It requires courage and honesty, and also confidence in the other side’s courage and honesty. Both sides would take fire from their own side for supporting a compromise. If negotiators on either side gave into the opposition and backed away from their agreements, their counterparts would look foolish.
Imagine how the NRA would look if they agreed to this, everything got passed, but one year later, Democrats took over Congress and repealed the rule against considering against more gun control . Or imagine how Democrats would look if the NRA, under heat from its membership, withdrew support and filed suit against the compromise.
A functional compromise can’t be done because the risk is took great and the trust is too little.
We saw this dysfunction play out nearly a decade ago with the Gang of Eight immigration bill (sponsored by a bi-partisan group of eight senators) fell apart. Under pressure from conservatives, many supporters of the bill including Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) backed away from it. As a law and order guy, I opposed the bill because I didn’t think we should reward those who broke our nation’s laws with legal status.
Yet, in recent years, I’ve come to think I and too many people on the right made a foolish mistake. Nine years later and our nation’s borders are nowhere closer to being secure and the illegal immigration problem is no closer to being solved. Engaging with the process would have been a wiser course by getting some beefed-up border security measures added in exchange for support. Combined with the verification system and legal immigration reforms that bill offered, our borders would be more secure and our immigration system would be far more manageable.
The death of the Gang of Eight bill meant the death of serious immigration legislation in this country, but it also signaled the death of serious legislating. It’d begun with the partisan Obamacare legislation but the death of the Gang of Eight bill created a situation where each side would only pass major legislation that it could muscle through with only their own members supporting it. Even then, this is hard to do. As much as majoritarians might blame the filibuster, it’s hard to muster a majority as party leaders have to somehow craft compromises for those who demand maximum ownership of the other side and those who actually need to get elected in swing districts.
Fundamentally, we have a broken system and bad faith actors on both sides. Until we fix that, we can scream, “Something must be done!” all we want. But it won’t happen, certainly not at the federal level. Those who really want to prevent these tragedies would do best to spend their efforts at the local level in their own school. And if there’s any silver lining in the brokenness of our federal political system, it’s that efforts at the state and school district level will probably be more impactful.
Trump Gets Spanked in Georgia
Donald Trump had a hate on for two Republican statewide officials in the state of Georgia who refused to go along with his stop the steal nonsense: Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump famously called Raffensperger and told him to find more than 11,000 extra votes for him to make up Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the State.
Both were considered political roadkill doomed to primary defeat. Congressman Jody Hice (R-GA) challenged Raffensperger on a Stop the Steal campaign. Trump recruited former United States Senator David Perdue (R-GA) to run against Kempt.
The political wisdom began to shift early in the year . Kemp would have a tough primary challenge, but Raffensperger was still dead.
Late polls showed a decisive move to Kemp and there was talk Kemp might win and Raffensperger might make it to a run-off with Hice. Perdue poo pooed late polls showing him down by 30 points saying he was not going to lose by 30 points.
Of course, Perdue didn’t lose by 30 point.
He lost by 52 points, a 74-22% margin. It was a well-deserved fate for a political hack who went back on his word to his “friend” Governor Kemp and ran an entire campaign on a lie that he knew was a lie. Oh and Brad Raffensperger won a clear majority in his race so was renominated without a runoff.
I don’t want to overstate the importance of the results. It doesn’t mean Republicans are done with Trump, but I think it shows that some Republican activists are getting a little tired of Trump’s backward-looking focus on the 2020 elections and some are tiring of him interfering in Republican primaries. Trump’s endorsement of the obviously not conservative or populist Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania has soured some Republicans, and so is the way that race is playing out.
It’s been eight days since the primary and the result is still not settled. Oz leads Republican businessman Dave McCormick by less than 1,000 votes. The election is headed to a recount and the margin is so tight that undated absentee ballots could become key. Either man will lead a divided party along with the party’s gubenatiorial nominee Trump-endorsed Stop the Steal Advocate State Senator Doug Mastriano.
One imagines the Democratic Nominee, Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D-PA) sitting with a bucket of popcorn watching as the Republican nominating process stretches into June and maybe July. Fetterman’s bald head makes him look like Jesse Ventura when he was Governor of Minnesota, but his politics are more like Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Fetterman is too far left to get elected to the Senate in a swing state unless there’s a Democratic wave year. But he has a better than fifty percent chance of being elected to replace a Republican Senator in a Republican wave year and he owes it all to Trump’s leadership of the GOP.
If anything can jar loose a few pragmatic activists from the Republican Party from following Trump, it’s the sting of major defeats. I doubt they’ll be enough to allow a serious primary challenge to Trump, but I suspect we’ll find out.