What are your priorities? Would you like to see meaningful action on climate change? Would you like to preserve Social Security for future generations? How about universal, affordable healthcare, something we still don't have? How about a minimum wage that is a living wage? How about changes in the tax code to address income inequality? If you want action on any, or preferably all, of those items you are going to need a supermajority of Americans to come together around those issues. You are going to need votes.
What we have now is an electorate divided right down the middle, and a newly minted Democratic nominee, who whatever her virtues, can be expected to preserve the existing 50-50 division. This division of the electorate is incompatible with any progress on any of the important economic and environmental issues that demand attention.
With that context in mind, why are Congressional Democrats choosing as their battle a collection of feckless half measures on gun control. I'm not sure I have ever heard of a cause less deserving of a sit in.
Don't misunderstand. There is a way to effectively regulate guns to reduce if not eliminate gun violence. Ban them. And confiscate them. Round up every privately held gun in America and melt them down into beer cans.
I know the arguments of NRA. "Only outlaws will have guns." "You'll just create a black market." They're right. You will create a black market, and only outlaws will have guns . . . very rich outlaws and not very many of them. Black market guns will be expensive. Your average crackhead convenience store robber, looking for his next rock, will not have the loot to buy himself a gun. Ban, confiscate, and melt them down will absolutely reduce gun violence.
The only problem is a recent Supreme Court decision that says that individual citizens have a constitutional right to own firearms. Not only that, but the Supreme Court has incorporated the second amendment into the fourteenth such that the individual states can't ban them either. Perhaps you can build a groundswell mandate to amend the constitution and repeal the second amendment.
Good luck with that.
Personally I think you'll have an easier time building a mandate for action on climate change and restoring the middle class. But you're going to need some gun owners to help with that. Fifty percent plus one isn't going to get you the governing majority you need.
Since you can't ban them, confiscate them, and melt them down into beer cans, what exactly are you proposing? We are told about "commonsense regulations" like closing the gun show loophole or limiting magazine size, or banning assault rifles -- always with the infamous grandfather clause allowing people who already own them to keep their assault rifles and 50 round magazines.
I'm going to lay down a marker to all of you supporters of these common sense regulations feckless half measures. They will not save a single life. Not one. Remember Columbine? The assault weapon ban was in effect at the time. The Orlando shooter, and the San Bernardino shooter, and the Aurora shooter, all of them passed background checks. None of them bought their weapons from private citizens at gun shows, where licensed dealers, who are the vast majority of sellers at gun shows, have to do background checks, anyway. That's right, the "gun show loophole" is an overhyped non-problem.
Let me be clear. I don't oppose your feckless half measures. Pass them if it will make you feel better. Regardless of whether it saves a single life or not, go for it. Just understand that the price tag for making these feckless half measures on guns your priority will be no progress on the climate, no improvement on the marginally better than nothing healthcare system we have, no meaningful action on income inequality, and no meaningful improvement in middle class living standards.
You don't have the votes on those issues. You couldn't even, after thousands of protesters occupied the statehouse in Wisconsin, muster enough off-year voters to throw out Scott Walker, or Rick Scott, or Rick Snyder or any other rightwing douchebag up for re-election just last year. Feckless half measures on guns will not build your coalition by a single voter. I know, I know, "polls say blah blah blah . . ." People may well mouth support for your feckless half measures to a telephone pollster -- because why not? -- but they don't VOTE those issues. Every Republican who mouths such talk-is-cheap support is still going to vote Republican.
Let me tell you who might join your coalition, perhaps not all of them at first, but enough to swing some elections. I'm talking about a constituency that used to be a core Democratic constituency. I'm talking about working class redneck gun owners. You can find working class redneck gun owners on construction slabs, and drving trucks, and working in factories all across America. They like the minimum wage. They want affordable health insurance. They want Social Security and Medicare to be there for them, and they can be persuaded that "medicare for all" is a good idea.
But wait, there's more. These are the folks who live out in the countryside and owned satellite dishes before anybody else. They like technology, and they are prime customers for solar energy "net metering" -- a policy being fought by the Koch brothers and ALEC. There's a wedge you can drive.
They also own guns. And they viscerally oppose all of your feckless half measures that won't save a single life.
Why in this or any other case do you want to drive a wedge that drives working class white voters into the other camp? The phrase "voting against their economic interests" has beomce a cliche. The question is why you would want to make "voting against their interests" easier.
Which brings us right to the heart of what the gun issue is all about. It is not about "saving lives," because the feckless half measures being proposed will not save any, and the policy that would save lives -- ban them, confiscate them, and melt them down into beer cans -- is such a political loser that no gun control advocate will go anywhere near that proposal. Why all the sturm and drang over policies that will be utterly ineffective?
To understand the gun issue you only have to answer a simple question.
Do you like working class white men? Alternatively, do you hate them?
Let's just put it on the table. Some progressives, certainly not all, but many in fact do hate the working class white man, especially if he's southern. You may have reasons, and they may be good reasons. Are your grievances, however legitimate, more important than saving ourselves from catastrophic climate change?
In case you don't believe that the gun issue is motivated in many cases by nothing more than animosity, someone at Daily Kos has a regular series they call "Gun Fail," where they post some mishap involving firearms. The message is simple enough to boil down to a bumper sticker. "Another dumbass kills himself or someone else with a gun (or both)." Shouldn't we ban them? Perhaps, but the Supreme Court won't let us, and even after we've passed your feckless half measures, we'll still have just as many entries in the "Gun Fail."
But wait. Who are these "Gun Fail" objects of progressive laughter and derision? They have one unifying characteristic. They're white. No "black gun fail" around here. That would be racist. Kind of like all that attention every time some white dude shoots up a movie theatre. There is a never any anguished call for action over gang shootings in our inner cities. The hell of it is that pointing the spot light on "black gun fail" might actually win over a few working class white folks, for a lot of bad reasons to be sure.
But you don't really want to win over white working class voters on guns . . . or any other issue, The plain truth is that our current political alignment, with a wedge between blacks, hispanics, women, and gays on the one hand, and the white working class on the other, suits many on both sides of that wedge just fine. It also suits our corporate overlords just fine. Just sayin’.
It doesn't suit me. I want progress on real issues of real importance. I want progress on climate change, and falling wages and living standards, and affordable healthcare, which we still don't have. If the price tag for that is making peace with rednecks, and leaving them alone to enjoy their Supreme Court endorsed rights, I'm willing to pay that price.
We need a different approach. We need to unite the working class around the common issues all working people face. That means we must transcend the identity politics laundry list. We must stop focusing on what makes us different, and start focusing on what makes us the same. Working class gun owners face the same economic challenges you face. The only thing these feckless half measures will accomplish is continuing to alienate a constituency we need to start winning back.
If you really want to control guns, really and truly, then advocate the policy that will work. Ban them, confiscate them, and melt them down. If you can't advocate such a real, effective solution, if instead you insist on vigorously supporting a whole lot of nothing that will not solve the problem, I suggest you change your focus and spend your energy on the economic and environmental issues that matter. Today's sit-in will not win support for your feckless half measures, and it will not broaden the Democratic coalition by a single voter.
That's why I'm not helping you with it.
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