Opinion: A Liberal’s case against gun control
Nicholas Barry Creel is an assistant professor of business law at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville.
I’m a liberal university professor who has, over the last several elections, voted straight-ticket Democrat without hesitation. I have a great deal more in common with the political views of AOC, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than I probably do any single member of the Republican Party in Congress.
However, when it comes to how we respond to mass shootings, my policy preferences are wholly divorced from my party. I believe that the Democratic Party’s response should not focus on gun control but should instead look to greatly expand social services, particularly those dealing with mental health.
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Pragmatically, I see no realistic path forward for meaningful gun control legislation that would help reduce mass shootings. My confidence stems from the fact that we’ve seen this tragic dance so many times before, where a mass shooting takes place and the nation reels at the horror, demanding some sort of action.
Democrats are essentially Sisyphus on gun control
Democrats then call for specific and fairly modest forms of gun control, mostly universal background checks and an assault weapons ban, while Republicans focus on calling the situation a mental health crisis and call for proposals such as arming teachers and hardening targets. Time goes by and ultimately nothing much happens on the policy front, with most Americans returning to their baseline views on firearms as the weeks go by and the news cycle moves on to other stories.
The most recent school shooting in Uvalde is currently following this exact script, just as it played out with Parkland, Sandy Hook and with all the other school shootings dating back to Columbine.
When it comes to gun control, Democrats are essentially Sisyphus. They are set on pushing the boulder that is gun control up a hill for eternity, knowing full well success is not coming and they will have to redo this all again when, not if, the next mass shooting happens at a school.
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Institutional barriers
Democrats keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results even though none of the fundamental reasons for their failure to get their boulder up the hill in Washington D.C. have changed. The primary reason that gun control measures will not come to be any time soon is fairly simple; the Senate and the Supreme Court are far too conservative a set of institutions to allow for it.
The Senate, with every state hanging equal representation regardless of its population, has a severe rural bias. There are just enough rural states that they can effectively stop any legislative policy their voters don’t want to be enacted. Given that rural states have become reliable Republican bastions, they do not want their senators to support gun control, so this veto point in the legislative process will remain for the foreseeable future.
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Even without the filibuster, rural state Democrats like Joe Manchin simply will not support something like an assault weapons ban, meaning Democrats would need to both abolish the filibuster and grow their Senate majority enough to overcome what would be inevitable defections on votes for the sort of gun control measures that could actually mitigate these shootings. Such Senate majorities are rare for Democrats and are nonexistent in the moment, so the legislative path forward for gun control is functionally dead on arrival to the upper chamber.
Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that gun control could pass the Senate and become law. Even then, the Supreme Court remains a hurdle that would very likely send the boulder cruising back down the hill again. The Court is currently on the cusp of expanding gun rights, possibly more than it has ever done before. Add to that the fact that the Court’s rightward ideological tilt is locked in such that it would take generations of concentrated effort and heaps of lucky timing in elections for Democrats to reform it to where gun control measures could stand much of a chance when subjected to judicial review.
Time for alternate solutions
My point isn’t to tell Democrats to accept defeat here, it’s to make the case that alternative strategies must be considered. Namely, Democrats such as our own Georgia Sens. Warnock and Ossoff should go by the Republican playbook of calling these events a symptom of a mental health crisis as part of a new strategy that could result in fewer mass shootings.
Our Senators could even begin this process by offering up a bill to rebuild a humane and effective insane asylum here in Milledgeville, Ga. The city, where I currently live and teach at Georgia College and State University, is home to what was once the world’s biggest mental institution but is now little more than a collection of abandoned buildings.
Even if mental health-focused policies such as this are not as successful as gun control would be when it comes to limiting the frequency and severity of mass shootings, they will have an effect and lives will be saved. Not only that, action on this issue will disarm Republicans of future retorts that addressing mental health alone can fix the problem we face. It would change the script going forward in a way that can only benefit Americans.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Why politics makes gun control nearly impossible even after shootings
