(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Getting Meaningful Gun Safety Laws Involves A Long Road That We MUST Travel [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-01 The Goal we MUST Achieve After reading Walter Shapiro’s article in Rollcall on Thursday, I have to say I agree with many of his specific points regarding the many obstacles in front of us on the road to gun laws that will substantially curtail mass shootings (by “substantially” I mean one every couple of decades instead of every week). However, I can’t accept his fatalistic conclusion that we can never achieve this worthy goal and therefore should not try to even go down the road towards it. That’s because not trying means having to accept hundreds or even thousands of innocent victims of gun violence, many of them little children, dying each year, forever. Something I, and I venture to guess all of you reading this, are not willing to accept. So what do we do? First, our hope lies in the fact that poll after poll shows that vast majorities of Americans favor enacting meaningful gun safety laws such as no-exception background checks, stringent red flag laws, bans on large capacity magazines and an assault weapons ban. So that’s the good news. But, we have to accept that getting to our goal involves embarking on a journey down a long road with numerous obstacles in our path. However, as I said in the title, it’s a road we must travel. So getting to the point of my post, let’s look down this road at the obstacles in front of us and how we overcome them. 1. Republicans - Obviously Republicans are the first obstacle in our way. Now, I am a realist when it comes to Republicans. It is a fool’s errand to think we can convince enough Republicans in the House and Senate to vote for meaningful gun legislation that Biden could sign into law. They are a lost cause. I am sorry to say that no matter how many people (children) die from gun violence over the next 1.5 years, you will not get enough of Republican votes to pass a single meaningful gun bill. They are a group paid by gun manufacturers who are afraid of their GOP Primary voters, and whose personal political skin comes before everything. There is no limit on the number of children being gunned down that will change their minds. Sandy Hook proved that. So I’m sorry to say that the only hope we have of getting over this Republican obstacle is to have Democrats retain the Presidency, take back the House majority and hold or preferably expand their majority in the Senate. Yes, this is a tall obstacle, especially when considering how many more Senate Democrats are up for reelection this cycle than Senate Republicans. But it’s one that can be overcome if we make preventing mass shootings a #1 issue in purple Districts and States where polls show it is supported by a significant majority of voters. Having craved MAGA Republican candidates to run against will help too. 2. The Filibuster - Since there is no way we are going to get 60 or more Democrats in the Senate after the 2024 elections, we are going to have to somehow deal with the filibuster rule in order to pass meaningful gun safety legislation in the Senate. That means getting 50 or more Senate Democrats to agree on some sort of filibuster reform that allows gun safety bills to get a majority vote in the Senate. While we currently have 51 Senate Democrats, Manchin and Sinema have been against pretty much any type filibuster reform, leaving us with only 49 who might vote vote for some type of reform. That means, at a bear minimum we have to replace Sinema in 2024 and retain all the other Dems. to have the 50+VP majority needed to make a filibuster rule change. While we don’t need to completely eliminate the filibuster, which would be very hard to get 50 Dem. votes for, we do need to get a rule change that gives us some sort of a path, no matter how arduous, to a majority vote on gun safety bills. Whether it’s a carve out exempting gun safety bills from a filibuster, or a talking filibuster where it would end when Republicans no longer have the physical stamina to continue to speak on the Senate floor, or simply a rule by which 40 or more votes are required to sustain a filibuster by which the majority could continuously call for cloture votes (the idea being that at some point Republicans would be unable to keep the 40 Senators on the floor needed to win such cloture votes and keep the filibuster going. Whatever, the rule change, it must be one that can get us to a majority vote on gun safety legislation. 3. SCOTUS - Shapiro’s article correctly points out that whatever gun safety bills are passed and signed into law, we will have to somehow overcome the obstacle of an inevitable Constitutional challenge in front of a currently 6-3 conservative Supreme Court. One way to overcome the SCOTUS obstacle is to simply win the case. Yes, far easier said than done. But while past Supremes have separated the “well regulated militia” part of the 2nd amendment from the “right of the people to bare arms shall not be infringed” part (incorrectly in my view and in the view of numerous legal scholars, but that’s a whole other subject for another diary) allowing anyone to be armed, they have not yet ruled on what types of arms or ammo the people may have. Laws have been on the books for decades banning the public possession of machine guns, hand grenades, etc. without a successful legal challenge. This would leave SCOTUS with having to constitutionally justify why the 2nd amendment allows one to possess an AR-15 but not a machine gun. Or why the 2nd amendment means there is no limit on how many rounds of ammo can be in a single magazine. These are some very difficult legal questions that might cause some on the the Court to pause. But let’s assume that this SCOTUS does a Bush v. Gore thing and declares the gun safety laws unconstitutional. Then what? A Constitutional amendment maybe? Not realistic in any timeframe short of 100 years. That leaves us with only two options, both which involve changing the balance of the Court from Conservative to Progressive, being either by adding seats or by attrition. The former seems unlikely, but not impossible. It would all depend on how off the rails the current conservative court goes. But to successfully “pack the Court” which caused even the very popular FDR great pain when he tried it, currently seems impossible. That leaves us in a hopeful holding pattern, to flip at least 2 Conservative seats. Sorry, but from a realistic perspective that maybe the only way forward towards a more permanent correction of our gun problem. That would provide the chance we need to restore the true meaning of the 2nd amendment, giving the right to gun possession only to members of a “well regulated militia”. Meaning if you want to possess an AR-15, join the National Guard and get trained in its proper use. All others would be subject to whatever gun/ammo restrictions enacted by their elected officals on the National, State and Local levels. Let me end where I began. The road to a gun safe society in this country is a long and arduous path, but one we must track for the sake of humanity and our children’s future. 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