![]() ![]() The system is broken, and it is not fixable in any meaningful sense.Gov. But it is counterproductive to pretend that there is a “normal” political or legal solution: Things are only going to get worse for at least the next 20 to 30 years, if not more, based on the stacked political system and the courts. I admire those working to try to change these policies. You’ll get the same results either way: namely, nothing. You can be uncivil if it makes you feel better. Predicting the results is tragically easy: more lethality, more frequent mass shootings, more deaths per mass shooting, and more piles of dead children.įor those advocating gun control, you can be civil if it makes you feel morally superior. More guns, less regulation of their lethality, and less government authority over who owns them. This is a one-way ratchet: The path going forward has only one possible outcome. ![]() Republicans keep insisting that the solution to gun violence is more guns, and they’re going to keep going with that theory no matter what the results are. We’re seeing permitless concealed carry, open carry, allowances to carry in more places, ending gun-free zones, laws banning red-flag laws all the while, the number of guns in circulation keeps rising by the millions, year after year after year. ![]() Any attempt to register this staggering array of weapons, much less take them away, is an impossible task with owners who are largely unwilling to comply.Īt the same time, red states have gone all in on weaponizing our society. That’s more than all the guns manufactured by the U.S. That’s more guns than are possessed by the Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, and police departments combined. Any measure that survives both the legislative process and the courts cannot conceivably be substantive enough to have an effect.īut even if you take this scenario a further order of magnitude into fantasy, there is still the reality that there are 400 million unregistered guns in this country, and 20 million of them are AR-15s. It is unlikely that anyone reading this will be alive when (and if) the Supreme Court ever reverses itself on gun laws. ![]() These Supreme Court rulings will stand for decades. So substantive federal legislation is nigh impossible, but even if it did manage to get through the House, Senate, and White House, it would have to survive a Supreme Court that has already made it clear that it is not going to allow the government to come between people and unfettered access to weapons of war. And even if some Republicans agreed to try something, they’d need 60 votes to overcome the filibuster in a Senate where the system of apportionment gives Republicans a +7 advantage in elections (i.e., the Democrats would need to win the national vote by seven points every year just to keep the Senate 50–50, and win by more than 15 points over three election cycles to get to 60 votes). Republicans have no intention of doing anything because they’d get primaried if they did. Which is why in moments of candor Republicans tell the truth: “ We’re not gonna fix it.” The Biden administration admitted there’s nothing else feasible that can be accomplished given the structure in place that guarantees nothing can, or will, be done. And if you do give them qualified immunity like cops, then you have the same problem you do with police: namely teachers blowing away mouthy eighth graders (who would be disproportionately Black or Hispanic), which is even worse than the status quo.Īnyone who actually understands the issue knows: It’s the guns, stupid. Dig UP, stupid!” Proposals to arm teachers are obviously infeasible: If you don’t give teachers immunity from prosecution and lawsuits, they won’t carry and nothing changes. The only solution proposed by Republicans is “more guns,” which is the modern equivalent of “No, no. The United States is the only country where people have such ready access to hundreds of millions of firearms, and we are the only country where mass shootings happen with such grim regularity. But this is simply a distraction: Other countries have all those things, but they don’t have mass shootings. Some Republicans still want to pretend that they’re engaging with the subject seriously: blaming mental health issues, video games, lack of prayer in schools, and transgender people for mass shootings. ![]()
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