Last week, the nation’s media focused its attention on the Boston bombings and to a lesser degree, the Texas explosion. But there was little dialogue about the outrageous action the week before by the Senate of voting down the expansion of background checks for gun buyers, a clear challenge to the democratic process.
One hundred and fifty years ago, President Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address declared “a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Lincoln believed that the Civil War and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men would help establish freedom and democracy in America.
What would Lincoln have said about the Senate debacle last week that resulted in the defeat of a minimalist gun control law whose main thrust was background checks for online and gun show sales, to be certain that buyers did not have a criminal history or mental illness? How could any rational person have been against this legislation? Were the Senators who voted against this bill being courageous and truly voting their consciences, or were they cowards afraid to cross the NRA? How could they not stand up “for the people” in America who favored enhanced background checks by an overwhelming majority?
Various polls showed that about 90 percent of Americans supported enhanced background checks, including 80% of Republicans, and 70 percent of gun owners and NRA members. In addition, a smaller majority of citizens favored limitations on ammunition clip capacity and automatic weapons. Yet 90 percent of Senate Republicans and four Democrats from rural states refused to support the bill on background checks. Is this democracy when the people’s voices that demanded this legislation by a large majority were ignored by their elected representatives? How could this travesty have occurred?
The key, of course, is that the leadership of the NRA turned against background checks, even though the organization had previously favored them and the majority of their membership backed this legislation. The reasons that the NRA executives changed from support to opposition are unclear, but several elements must be considered.
The NRA leadership in all probability wanted to reinforce their political clout to make sure that politicians would hew to their line in the future. They also did not want to grant Obama any kind of victory regarding gun control, as their antipathy towards him is well known. There is also the
slippery slope argument that once any gun control legislation was passed, more would follow in the years to come. In addition, there was fear that passage of background checks would lead to a national gun registry, which the NRA and most of its member are strongly against. The unwillingness of the NRA to allow the Senate to pass background check legislation was in spite of the fact that the bill surely would have died in the House.
The Senators who refused to buck the NRA on background checks felt that they were being realistic about the power of the NRA to defeat them in the next election if they dared to cross the organization. Though the vast majority of citizens favored this legislation, they usually do not base
their votes for candidates on this one issue, while the people opposed tend to use this one issue as a litmus test as to whom they will vote for. The opponents also tend to contribute money to candidates on the basis of this issue and are much more activist in their support of their candidates.
The defeat of the background check legislation is further proof of the way various powerful special interests control the legislative process in both the federal and state governments. Additional evidence can be seen in the nation’s tax code and subsidies for energy companies and farmers,
as well as the way defense contracts and other government largesse is handled.
As long as the electorate does not study the issues before they go to the polls and know the stances candidates have taken in the past and how they will vote in the future, the special interests will continue to direct the passage of legislation that they favor. Democracy, where the will of the
majority is supposed to determine legislation, will remain subverted.
Resurrecting Democracy
www.robertlevinebooks.com
Posted at 06:06 AM in Congressional ethics, Current Affairs, Politics | Permalink
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020