A tragedy of unspeakable proportions unfolded on Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas, a town about 90 miles west of San Antonio. An 18-year-old gunman entered an elementary school shooting at random and wound up murdering 19 fourth-grade students and 2 teachers. The rampage was stopped by a border patrol agent from a special unit that followed the gunman into the school and shot him dead, but not before the lethal loss of life among school students and faculty.
Almost immediately, calls for gun control started emanating from elected Democrats, including President Biden. Despite previous attempts to pass some type of legislation, Congress remains deadlocked due to Democrats continually advocating for gun bans rather than working on bipartisan legislation to address things like mental health funding, school safety, and other areas where both sides can work together.
As a nation we must ask: When in God’s name will we stand up to the gun lobby?
When in God’s name will we do what needs to be done?
I’m sick and tired of it. We have to act.
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 25, 2022
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for Democrats, who are now calling for “filibuster reform” once again to ram through legislation, is West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.
Despite renewed calls to bypass the filibuster for some kind of gun control push over the past day, Manchin says he supports a variety of bills but does not want the “insanity” of nuking the filibuster to get it:
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Tuesday lamented the lack of Senate support for tougher gun laws following a mass shooting in Texas hours earlier but rejected the notion of eliminating the filibuster for the purpose of passing such a bill.
Manchin noted that he has three grandchildren similar in age to the victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where at least 14 kids and one teacher were shot and killed.
“It’s just absolutely horrific,” Manchin said. “You all know where I stand; I’ll do anything I can.”
Pressed on whether he would consider scrapping the filibuster to tighten the nation’s gun laws, he warned that it would lead to chaos in the Senate.
“The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity. Total insanity,” he said.
Rather than work on consensus legislation, Democrats will once again prove that using the issue of gun violence for political purposes is more important than moving the ball incrementally to address issues without infringing on constitutional rights. Many of the voices calling for gun control now are the same advocating for the removal of Resource Officers from schools nationwide, a move that continues to make schools less safe.
As Manchin, and others have said, the normal process of building legislation based on facts and actionable data that might help prevent a future mass shooting would be the most prudent and proper approach to this issue. Once again, the warning signs of a troubled individual coming from a broken home environment were there, but no one was aware enough or able to act before the tragedy occurred.
Instead, the Democratic Party position leads with gun bans or nothing else, a non-starter that will not attract bipartisan support among Congress or among voters, for that matter.
Rather than nuke the filibuster, Manchin turned the tables toward opponents of tighter gun laws:
On Tuesday, after the Uvalde shooting, Manchin suggested that reporters focus their attention on the opponents of gun reform, wondering aloud how anyone could vote against tougher laws after another elementary school shooting.
“You guys ought to be pushing the people that just won’t even budge on anything. I don’t know what it takes to move,” he said. “It makes no sense at all why we can’t do commonsense — commonsense — things and try to prevent some of this from happening. … [It’s] unbelievable how we’ve gotten to a society where someone could be this deranged and this sick.”
That response will not placate a progressive base among Democrats that see Manchin and Sinema as the two biggest obstacles blocking the enactment of some large Biden agenda items.
From a federal voting takeover to the green new deal, to new gun laws, Democrats unwilling to work in a bipartisan manner would prefer to eliminate the filibuster and begin acting on all these items based on a simple majority vote.
The end result will be outrage and sadness for the victims and families, and then little done by Congress in terms of actionable items to address issues of gun violence at the root of the problem.
UPDATE
Looks like Dems have seen the light on this issue and rather than try and cram through bills that have no chance of passing, or nuke the filibuster, Schumer is apparently open to negotiating a bipartisan bill:
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told colleagues on the Senate floor Wednesday that he will not immediately bring gun control measures to the floor in the wake of two mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, because he doesn’t expect them to muster enough Republican votes to pass.
Instead, the Democratic leader said he will wait for Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and other members of his caucus to try to negotiate a bipartisan compromise with Republicans on a measure that has a better chance of securing 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
Whether it’s in good faith or not, it would’ve been a waste of time and potentially embarrassing for Schumer to bring legislation to the floor with no chance of passing. If progress is to be made on anything relating to keeping guns out of the hands of the wrong people, it will have to be crafted with both sides at the table.
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