They’re negotiating from weakness because their side hasn’t invested in base-building
Two paragraphs from a story in yesterday’s Washington Post analyzing the bipartisan gun legislation now inching its way through Congress have stuck with me.
The first reads:
The Senate’s compromise gun bill emerged from asymmetrical negotiations in which the top Democratic negotiator always predicted he wouldn’t get everything he wanted, while the top Republican always promised the bill wouldn’t have anything he didn’t want.
This is true. From the first days after the Uvalde school shooting, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut (the home state of the Sandy Hook massacre), has downplayed expectations of sweeping reform, reminding listeners that “I’ve been part of many failed negotiations in the past.” Two weeks ago, on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday show, he told host Jake Tapper that senators were “not going to do anything that compromises people’s Second Amendment rights.”
Meanwhile Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas (the home state of Uvalde) never backed off any of his most expansive assertions. “Democrats pushed for an assault weapons ban, I said no,” Cornyn told the crowd at the Texas GOP convention late last week. “They tried to get a new three-week mandatory waiting period for all gun purchases, I said no. Universal background checks, magazine bans, licensing requirements, the list goes on and on and on. And I said no, no, 1,000 times no….“I will not, under any circumstance, support new restrictions for law-abiding gun owners. That will always be my red line.”
The second paragraph reads:
The result of the work led by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is the most sweeping congressional response to gun violence since the 1990s. It’s also pretty modest, falling well short of what President Biden had publicly hoped for just weeks ago — and well short of steps that have the support of a majority of Americans.
That’s right. Eight-nine percent of Americans favor universal background checks for all gun buyers, including 84% of Republicans. But that’s not in the bipartisan bill. By much narrower majorities, Americans also favor a nationwide ban on the sale assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Those steps are also not included in the bill.
Why, despite public opinion, do Republican defenders of gun rights negotiate with such confidence while Democratic advocates of gun safety negotiate with such caution? Because one side listens to its base, which is hyper-alert to any threat to its positions and organized from top to bottom to hold their elected representatives feet to the fire, while the other side dislikes its base, which is distracted by many competing issues and organized solely from the top-down, not the bottom-up.
Gun owners don’t just have the NRA and the more hard-line Gun Owners of America raising money and electioneering for their interests in Washington and state capitols; they have thousands of local gun clubs and gun shows where they get together regularly to socialize, shoot guns, train their kids, and reinforce their identity.
Gun safety advocates have Everytown for Gun Safety, a massive lobbying organization that has received more than a quarter-billion dollars in funding by New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg, which counts Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action as its grassroots auxiliaries. These folks, along with older lobbying organizations like the Brady Campaign and Giffords, have the wherewithal to go toe-to-toe with the NRA, but their base has no local home. Moms and students don’t go anywhere regularly to hang out together and “mother” or “study” their way toward a less violent or fearful society.
Only March For Our Lives, a new group started by students in Parkland, Florida who were politicized by the mass shooting at their high school in 2018, showed any sign of altering this basic imbalance, with its combination of in-your-face assertion on social media and cross-racial alliance building with inner-city peers who live with daily violence, not just the kind that ruffle suburban feathers. But as I wrote in my newsletter a few weeks ago, a combination of well-meaning liberals closely tied to the current leadership of the Democratic party and bigfooting by Everytown tamed the March For Our Lives movement pretty fast.
The deeper problem that remains either way is that hard-right conservatives like rabid gun owners have places where they regularly go to connect, have fun AND reinforce their political allegiances while liberals and progressives do not. A vigil or a rally is no substitute for a political home. Nor is more money from wealth donors, even as the gun safety lobby tries to parade its recent success with fundraising into more clout with politicians, per this New York Times story.
As a result, one side in the gun debate asserts its claims with confidence and the other side with timidity. It’s a miracle that we’re even getting a bipartisan bill moving in the Senate, even though the 14 Republican Senators who voted for it are getting the lion’s share of what they want while the 50 Democrats also backing it are getting some modest crumbs.
And now, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has gone further, ruling that the constitutional right to bear arms (which only refers to a regulated militia, but who cares when you have power) overrides a state’s right to impose regulations limiting who can obtain and carry a gun in public. Will Democrats react with timidity, or will someone find a way to galvanize the passive majority that thinks their own safety is more important than words uttered by six members of a faraway court, half of whom got their seats by less than democratic means? I know what I’d like to see happen, but I’m not holding my breath.