All We Have to Do Is Give Them Democrats Guns and He Do It Again

It's go a blueprint. After a mass shooting — like the i in Orlando, Florida, that killed 50 people (including the shooter) on Saturday — Republicans phone call for "thoughts and prayers." Democrats call for action on gun command.

On the kickoff twenty-four hour period Congress is back in session after the Orlando attack, Senate Democrats are introducing a beak to prevent "suspected terrorists" from legally purchasing guns. (The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, had been investigated past the FBI on 2 dissimilar occasions.) Later the San Bernardino shootings in 2015, Democrats led a similar endeavor to ban people on the no-wing list from gun purchases. And Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) is introducing a bill that would ban gun ownership by people bedevilled of detest crimes.

This wasn't always the instance. When Neb Clinton was in the White House, gun control was seen as a losing outcome for Democrats — one that alienated them with white moderate voters who could be gun owners themselves. It simply wasn't an effect that almost Democrats brought up if they didn't have to. Now that they can focus on "terrorists" instead of the guns themselves, though, Democrats are leaning in.

The shift to an agenda that focuses on keeping guns out of the hands of particular people is probably 1 big reason why Democratic elected officials are comfortable calling for gun control proposals. Just it could also be camouflaging the divides among moderates, liberals, and Democratic politicians well-nigh what the ultimate solutions are.

"Dangerous people should non exist able to easily acquire guns"

National Democrats aren't just coalescing around the general idea that gun violence is a fixable issue and greater restrictions on guns would help. They've unified (mostly) behind a detail policy agenda — one that'southward slightly different, at least in its accent, from the gun control debates of 20 years ago.

The new Democratic gun control calendar boils down to something the Center for American Progress says: "Dangerous people should non be able to easily acquire guns." That means universal groundwork checks. It ways more robust mental health requirements for gun ownership. And information technology means preventing particular populations of people from buying guns legally — including suspected terrorists and domestic abusers.

In the 1990s, the gun control contend was about particularly dangerous guns or forms of ammunition. The "dangerous people" calendar deemphasizes those policies. Instead, it'due south about the process by which the government decides whether it's okay for someone to ain a gun to begin with.

It's actually possible to pin downward exactly when this shift occurred — or at least when it was formalized. In April 2013, Senate Democrats decided to endeavour to pass a gun command bill after a mass shooting killed 26 people, most of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Simply then–Majority Leader Harry Reid deliberately decided not to include an "assault weapons ban" (banning guns with item "armed services-style" features from existence sold) in the main neb. When sponsor Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) offered it equally an amendment, only forty senators voted for it. (Compare that with 2004, when a like bill got 52 yep votes in a Republican-controlled Senate.)

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) meets with families of victims killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. (Mark Wilson/Getty)

When Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) agreed on a proposal to aggrandize groundwork checks, though, Reid and Senate Democrats tried to get information technology into the existing bill. When the Manchin-Toomey proposal got only 54 votes — not enough to clear the 60-vote threshold required — President Obama gave a Rose Garden spoken language calling it a "shameful day for America."

But the legislative defeat for the Democrats opened upward a large political opportunity. Expanded background checks are overwhelmingly popular — 85 percent of Americans back up requiring background checks for gun-show purchases, co-ordinate to the Pew Research Center. That includes 79 percentage of Republicans and 82 percent of people who think protecting gun rights is more of import than controlling gun buying. Add that to the fact that a majority of senators had voted for Manchin-Toomey, and it became a no-brainer policy for Democrats to rally around — ane they didn't have to worry would amerce moderates.

"The fox to winning over moderates is to be the nigh reasonable person in the room," says Sarah Trumble of Tertiary Way — an system that pushes for moderation and bipartisanship. "It's not difficult to back up both the Second Amendment and reasonable restrictions, because the proposals on the table that people are talking about are things that legitimate gun owners practise as a affair of course."

Former Democratic strategist and current caput of the Institute on Politics at Georgetown Mo Elleithee put it another way: "There is no more powerful interest, no more powerful constituency, than suburban moms. And I remember y'all would be hard-pressed to observe a suburban mom who doesn't support some form of increased gun safety measure. Even the suburban moms who back up the 2d Amendment, who like the idea that there should be a gun in the firm for safe, still believe that there should be a background check."

Of course, in theory, something so broadly supported would merely exist passed past Congress — taking it abroad every bit a rallying betoken for ane party. Only because the NRA and Republican members of Congress are standing firm against any gun restrictions, they have allowed Democrats to seize the result.

(Pew Research Centre)

"Right now," Trumble says, "the NRA doesn't look even remotely reasonable." And that's opened up an opportunity for Democrats to come off as the adults in the room.

The urgency progressives feel has put a damper on civil liberties concerns

Expanding background checks is one component of the "dangerous people shouldn't have guns" agenda. The other is who tin be barred from ownership a gun once the information in that groundwork bank check comes back.

Chelsea Parsons of the Center for American Progress brings upwardly domestic abusers every bit one example. In that location'due south an "increased risk of homicide to women posed by domestic abusers who take piece of cake access to guns," she says. "That is another gap in the police that nosotros spent a lot of time working on, to strengthen the laws and reduce access by that group of known dangerous people."

That's also the logic backside tighter restrictions on mentally ill gun buyers, another policy that'south overwhelmingly supported past Americans across the ideological spectrum. In fact, it's more popular with Republicans than with Democrats — in part considering many liberals feel that conservatives scapegoat the mentally ill later mass shootings to distract from the issue of gun violence.

And this is where the "dangerous people" agenda runs into a bit of trouble. The particular groups targeted by restrictions are often either marginalized — similar the mentally ill — or intersect with other issues where liberals tend to exist much more skeptical of regime power, such as national security.

Mark Gail/Washington Postal service

Yahya Wehelie was stuck in Cairo for 2 months afterwards beingness placed on the US no-fly list, without knowing why. (Marking Gail/Washington Postal service)

After the San Bernardino shooting last calendar week, President Obama and White House officials urged Congress to pass a law disallowment people on the federal "no-wing listing" from buying guns. Obama presented this as another no-brainer issue: "Those same people who we don't allow to fly can go in to a shop right at present in the U.s.a. and buy a firearm, and there's zilch that we tin do to stop them." Only what Senate Democrats actually proposed (unsuccessfully) was a slightly different proposal that dates back to the George Due west. Bush assistants: giving the Department of Justice the power to ban people on the FBI's terrorism watch listing, much bigger than the no-wing list, from legally buying a gun.

A recent GAO report found that people on the scout list have succeeded in buying guns about 2,000 times betwixt 2004 and 2014. Merely at that place are 700,000 people or more on the list. And, as progressives have pointed out throughout the Bush-league and Obama administrations, it'south hard to even know who'southward on the lookout list — and even harder for those wrongfully placed on it to become off.

The Senate, ironically, knows better than anyone that the government's terrorism watch lists can be overbroad: Quondam Sen. Ted Kennedy spent 3 weeks trying to become his proper name off the no-wing listing in 2004. (This might have been why the Senate went with the FBI scout list instead.) But the FBI sentry list is much bigger, and unlikely to be less flawed — especially given reports of FBI profiling and entrapment of Muslims. The bad-mannered politics of the issue are epitomized by who's sponsoring the beak in each sleeping room: In the Senate, it'southward centrist Democrat and security militarist Feinstein; in the House, information technology'due south Rep. Peter Male monarch (R-NY), Congress's nigh vocal supporter of surveilling American Muslims.

(Alex Wong/Getty)

Of course, it's not unusual for policies that pose ceremonious liberties concerns to garner broad public support. Progressives are generally more sensitive to those concerns, but when it comes to guns, they're compelled by the sheer obviousness of the "dangerous people shouldn't have guns" logic.

Parsons, of CAP, says the answer is to fix the watch list. "We should practice both things. We should strive to make the lookout list appropriate and accurate and ramble, and at the same fourth dimension nosotros should make sure that individuals who are known to the FBI to have ties to terrorism aren't able to purchase guns."

Both moderates and advocates are cooling on assault weapons bans

Though it doesn't look like Democrats will be able to aggrandize background checks, prepare what Parsons calls the "terror gap," or enact any other restrictions on gun buying someday soon, this could actually be good news. Much like the defeat of Manchin-Toomey in 2013, these failures are an advantage for Democrats: As long equally there are policies that are overwhelmingly supported not just past the public but by gun owners themselves, but aren't yet constabulary, at that place volition be a way for Autonomous elected officials to talk about guns without alienating gun owners.

But it's genuinely hard to tell how deep the consensus on gun command amid moderates (including gun owners), liberals, and Democratic elected officials goes.

Mo Elleithee assumes that passing expanded groundwork checks volition build momentum for further activity. "The assail weapons ban, a ban on armor-piercing bullets, a ban on high-capacity clips — that is, I think, the next level of where the fight volition go," he says. "Because nosotros don't take those things despite pregnant public support — it's non as high as the background checks, but there'due south still more than than a bare majority."

That pregnant public support, still, comes with a large asterisk. Co-ordinate to Pew, 57 percent of Americans support a ban on attack-style weapons; in 2013, 53 per centum of Americans supported a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips. Simply unlike the "dangerous people" agenda, bans on these types of weapons divide gun owners from non–gun owners. Of Americans with a gun in the house, 49 percent support an assault weapons ban; in 2013, 43 per centum of people who said they owned a gun supported the ban (and only 41 pct of gun owners supported a ban on loftier-chapters clips).

"The identify y'all're most likely to see a policy divergence" between moderates and liberals, Trumble explains, "is when you lot're talking about bans. Liberals are much more likely to support assault weapons bans and high-capacity mag bans. That'southward a canis familiaris whistle for moderates and people on the right" — talk near banning 1 matter, and gun owners (and those more sympathetic to them) outset getting worried the government volition ban more than things.

That isn't stopping some liberal institutions like the New York Times editorial board from calling for a version of an assault weapons ban. Just at the aforementioned time the Times is embracing the concept, others in the liberal policy elite are shying away from information technology — not because it goes too far, only considering it doesn't go about far enough.

For some people, the problem is but besides many guns

This is the other thing that makes the "unsafe people" agenda unlike from the rest of the gun policy fence. Gun policy experts are fairly well convinced that expanding groundwork checks would have a meaningful office in reducing gun violence — non necessarily the spectacular mass shootings that are often the political reason Congress tries to pass gun control, only what CAP's Chelsea Parsons calls "interpersonal violence that happens in communities around the country that ends up becoming fatal considering of piece of cake access to firearms." In other words, it'due south not only good politics but also good (as in effective) policy.

The same is true for other planks in the "dangerous people" agenda: mental health screenings, domestic violence restrictions. And while Parsons acknowledges, "I don't think that individuals on the terror watch list are primary drivers of gun violence in this country," she nevertheless thinks the "terror gap" is also obvious a pigsty in the police non to fix.

But assault weapons bans don't work as well. As Nick Baumann wrote in the Huffington Mail in response to the Times's op-ed, "Assault weapons bans are hard to write and implement, and easy to undermine and circumvent. Even a perfect set on weapons ban wouldn't do anything about most gun violence, considering most gun violence involves handguns that aren't forbidden under such laws."

And this gets to the centre of the problem: Many of the progressives who are worried about gun violence in its own correct are increasingly convinced that the existent trouble is that there are, in fact, merely likewise many guns in America. And that means the ultimate policy solution, for them, is to accept some of those guns away.

In that location aren't exactly policy proposals for Australian-style mandatory buybacks circulating among the progressive pundit form — largely because it's a nonstarter with the electric current Supreme Court, which has ruled that there is an individual right to ain guns (a premise that many liberals still argue with). Instead information technology's more of an mental attitude: the sense that there is not actually any such thing as the "responsible gun owner" Trumble talks about, because information technology is irresponsible to ain something and so lethal.

Final week, for case, progressives were outraged by Senate Republicans' refusal to expand background checks. But just before that, many progressives were talking with alert about news reports that a record number of gun-auction background checks had been conducted on Blackness Friday — because that meant a lot of people were ownership guns. The fact that these were all, by definition, people who could pass a background check was irrelevant. The guns themselves were the trouble.

And while Elleithee says that many suburban moms who favor some restrictions on guns "like the idea that there should be a gun in the house for safety," many progressives don't. In October, Washington Post writer Christopher Ingraham compiled information showing that an average of one person a calendar week in America is shot and killed by a toddler, nearly oft because the toddler has gotten hold of an unsecured gun. Ingraham mentioned item policies that could mitigate the likelihood of that happening, which the NRA predictably opposes: more low-hanging fruit. But he also concluded, "In a land with more guns than people, it's only natural that a certain number of small children are going get their easily on an unsecured firearm, with tragic consequences."

"We're seeing sort of a cultural divide that makes it really hard for people to put themselves in one another's shoes," says Sarah Trumble. "Someone who grew upward in a sport-hunting, shooting community can't relate to being scared of guns. And someone who grew upwardly in an inner urban center, whose simply interaction with guns is drive-past shootings, can't sympathize why anyone would need 1 at all." That'south borne out by public opinion: 58 percent of people without a gun in the house would feel uncomfortable with ane. The groups that are least probable to own guns themselves, including nonwhites and urban residents, are also the ones who are to the lowest degree likely to be comfortable with the idea.

This is where the liberal-moderate coalition that's immune Democrats to lean in on guns breaks downwardly. Calling gun ownership a trouble in its own right, Trumble says, "promotes the same type of backlash that the Gun Owners of America–type rhetoric does on the other side — farthermost extremes that are not helpful to the conversation. Considering the fact of the matter is that America is a gun civilization. ... We're non going to put that toothpaste back in the tube."

Trumble frames it every bit the deviation betwixt "gun prophylactic" and "gun control." The latter, she says, "ofttimes scares moderates and gun owners and makes them experience very villainized."

"Only we're not trying to wave a magic wand to get rid of all the guns," Trumble continues, "and certainly no one should be." Except that some progressives would, in fact, like to come across that happen — at least if the perennial popularity of manufactures about gun control in Nippon and Australia, where guns are more or less banned, is any indication.

Elleithee, too, dismisses the notion that anyone in power is calling not just for restrictions on sure types of guns or gun owners but for fewer guns, period. When I shrugged that I'd seen some calls for information technology in the progressive media, he blurted, "Yeah, the progressive media. That doesn't correspond a majority of America."

He's correct; it doesn't. Simply 26 percentage of Americans back up a handgun ban. The –Sandy Hook era hasn't actually resulted in Americans becoming more supportive of widespread gun control — in Dec 2014, Pew saw a 20-yr loftier in the share of Americans who said that gun rights were more than important than gun command.

The depth of the gun dissever makes it all the more astonishing that Democrats have managed to notice a unified voice — and a popular policy agenda — on the issue by focusing on the problem of "dangerous people." Most of the credit for this goes to the NRA and Republicans, for allowing Democrats to seize the moral high ground in rhetoric and the middle ground in policy. As long as that'south the case, information technology appears, guns will be good for Democrats.

VIDEO: America's gun problem explained in 90 seconds

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Source: https://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9859802/democrats-gun-control