THESE GUN CRAZED DIS-UNITED STATES...

 

Getting ready for a prairie dog mass attack.... or a feral pig...

The Second Amendment absolutists can not marshal any legitimate argument against raising the legal age to purchase firearms, banning assault weapons, banning large magazines, expanded background checks, or red flag laws.   Instead they rely on absurd contentions like South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune's defense of AR 15's for "shooting prairie dogs" or Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy's claim that they are essential for killing "feral pigs."   Perhaps those senators and their gun loving constituents are also spectacularly bad shots, which is how they justify allowing the public to purchase extra large magazines for these weapons of war.   Another refrain from the gun obsessives is that any regulation- no matter how innocuous and inconsequential- would lead America down a "slippery slope" to yanking all guns out of the homes and armories of every American citizen waiting to defend his or her home against the hordes erupting from lawless cities, murderous rapists and burglars, and a potentially tyrannical government which apparently can be stymied by a few homeowners with an AR 15 hanging over the mantle.  

    The obvious rejoinder is that every law and every regulation can be likened to starting down a slippery slope.    Speed limits on our highways, requiring seat belts and air bags could lead to automobile confiscation.   Banning pouring toxic waste into a river could lead to the end of all manufacturing in America and a new Depression.    And so on.   However, there is a slippery slope in America- but it's not one covered in good intentions and government regulations.   It's covered in blood.  The blood of our children.  The blood of police officers and security guards shot by suicidal bullet proof vest wearing maniacs wielding AR 15's and firing cop killer bullets.    The blood of over 40,000 annually who die from firearms, including three year olds accidentally shooting their five  year old siblings with the family .40 caliber Glock.

https://usafacts.org/data/topics/security-safety/crime-and-justice/firearms/firearm-deaths/

    The fact is that an overwhelming majority of Americans want Congress to do something effective that will reduce the carnage that exists in only one ostensibly "civilized" nation on earth.   And there are plenty of possible methods that Congress can choose to enact such laws, politics notwithstanding.    The headline on a recent story was "US House passes gun bill doomed to fail in Senate."   

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61742732

The law passed by the House of Representatives would raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons to 21 and ban large capacity magazines.    But why should such a measure- any measure- be "doomed to die" in the United States Senate?

    Of course there is a one word answer:  filibuster.    Anything passed by the House, which still operates on the antiquated democratic principle that "majority rules," is doomed to die in the Senate, which has managed to turn minority created deadlock into its sole operating protocol, one which is more dear to the hearts of at least two ostensibly Democratic senators than children's lives or democracy itself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/21/filibuster-voting-rights-manchin-sinema/

    And this is where members of the ruling majority in the House need to get creative.   First of all, no gun control bill (or voting rights bill, for that matter) should contain more than one matter.    Don't combine raising the age to purchase assault weapons with instant background checks or a ban on large magazines.   Each bill should be a stand alone, and each should be put before the Senate as one item only, no amendments allowed.   If Republicans want to vote in favor of allowing super large magazines- for which no justification has ever been offered (other than the "slippery slope" nonsense), then make them go on record.   If they want criminals and insane people to be allowed to purchase firearms without having to go through a background check, then put them on record on that, too.

    But more importantly, just as a judge tells a person jailed for civil contempt of court for defying a court order that he has "the keys to the jail cell"-   meaning that he can get out of jail simply by doing what the court has ordered, the House has the key to unlock the Senate filibuster and render it useless.   And the key is found in Article I, Section 7 of the United States Constitution:   "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives..."

What that means is that no money can be spent by the Federal government for anything- not for that  air base in South Dakota, those Army bases in Kentucky and Texas, that levee in Louisiana, those price supports for wheat in Kansas for corn in Nebraska or in Wisconsin for milk- all states with two Republican senators- unless it originates in an appropriations bill in the House.   The House holds the ultimate power of the purse over everything, and Democrats facing an existential crisis- whether it is to the lives of our children or the existence of our democracy- should not hesitate to use it, to hold it as a Sword of Damocles over every Republican senator who refuses to vote to change Senate rules to dispose of the filibuster.     

    Conventional Democrats will argue that this would be a poison pill that would doom Democrats' hopes for mid term electoral success.   I would argue that in a world where the national media  has already buried their party's hopes to retain control of either or both houses of Congress in the midterms, presumably because media "experts" have concluded that voters care more about the price of gasoline and groceries than their freedom to live in a democracy or their own children's safety in school,  what have you got to lose?    Existential means that your existence is threatened.   Perhaps you should act accordingly.