Fact: we are not going to see significant and enforceable legislation to limit guns anytime soon. That applies to military-like assault weapons and oversized magazines, and we will continue to see gun-advocates tell us that the solution to all of our societal gun violence is simply more guns. In the hands of teachers as well as some nebulous definition of a “good guy” who will solve all of these mass shooting issues. I wonder how many mass shooters were “good guys” at one time or another. “Teacher basic training”?
You mean like that teacher in Dalton, Georgia? “A teacher is in custody after police say he barricaded himself inside a classroom at a high school in northwest Georgia Wednesday [2/28] and fired a shot.
“The situation at Dalton High School in Dalton began around 11:30 a.m. when the social studies teacher, identified by police as Jesse Randal Davidson, 53, blocked students from entering his class, school principal Steve Bartoo told reporters.
“Bartoo said he and an assistant principal helped get the students into another classroom before Bartoo tried to make contact with Davidson by knocking on the door. He said Davidson slammed the door and yelled for him to go away while making ‘nonsensical noises.’” CBS News, February 28th. Yeah, like that.
The solution will not come from states either, although local legislation does help… a little. Illinois has tough gun laws, but Chicago is “gun homicide city.” A wannabee perp who wants a gun can either find one on the black market or simply drive to neighboring Indiana and just buy what they want… and take it back to Chicago for some action. AR-15s are particularly hot, noting that in 2015 alone, 2.7 million of them were sold in the US, and the NRA estimates that there are now 15 million AR-15s – their symbol for the 2nd Amendment – in the entire country. Bullets from the AR-15, according to military experts, are intended to rip up the insides of the human body… not simply to wound.
Without federal legislation and stiff penalties for ownership and use semi-automatic assault weapons, these guns will easily pass from pro-guns states to any level of gun-control states. We are watching Congress, genuinely considering a bill to force gun control states to accept persons from other states, carrying concealed weapons or under open-carry laws valid under their local laws but clearly illegal in gun-control states. Really? Yup! Really. There is a self-righteous smugness to the NRA, knowing it has enough congress-people and state legislators on its campaign payroll to force lax gun laws and scoff at the “liberals” who are powerless to stop them.
But demographic trends are working slowly against the National Rifle Association. Millennials (almost 60% with at least some college) and younger – having watched their peers slaughtered by mass shooters for almost two decades – are overwhelmingly opposed to allowing assault weapons to continue to be legal. They are the ones who have participated in the “active shooter” or “safety” drills. They are the ones instructed on “flee, take shelter or resist” responses to potential gun-toting campus intruders. They’re the ones who know that hunters do not need semi-automatic weapons. And it is the soon-to-be-able to vote Gen-Z’s in Parkland, Florida who are the most visible anti-gun activists in the land… and the millions of their peers who identify with them.
What’s even more interesting is the slow but steady alignment of the NRA with the Republican Party… to the point where its campaign contributions are almost entirely to GOP candidates. An alignment that sooner or later will cost the GOP dearly as younger voters replace the aging diehards who are the NRA’s backbone. Here’s the way the March 3rd Los Angeles Times analyzes the history of this trend:
“During the 1992 election cycle, the NRA contributed 37% of its congressional campaign donations to Democrats. Republicans got the lion’s share — 63% of the $1.8 million the group gave that year — but it was not as if the NRA was a pseudo-wing of the party.
“By 2016, that had all changed.
“According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in political campaigns, nearly 99% of the $1 million in NRA contributions to congressional candidates in 2016 went to Republicans. The few Democrats who did get money — Reps. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota and Tim Walz of Minnesota — all have A ratings from the group.
What changed? Two things, according to many of those who have followed the group.
“First, in the fall of 1994, the Democratic-controlled Congress — with staunch opposition from the NRA — narrowly passed a 10-year federal ban on assault weapons. In the two-year period leading up to the vote on the issue, the NRA increased its contributions to Republicans by about $675,000 while reducing contributions to Democrats by nearly $200,000. It was the group’s largest single-cycle — or two-year — dip in donations to Democrats.
“Second, many who study the issue say, both the NRA and the Republican Party became more implacably opposed to gun regulations, while Democrats mostly favored them.
“‘It is all about playing to the arch-conservative base,’ said Robert Spitzer, chairman of the political science department at the State University of New York at Cortland, who has written extensively on politics and gun control. He said that since the 1994 assault weapons vote, the NRA ‘locked itself into a pattern of ever more apocalyptic, extremist, uncompromising rhetoric.’ The progression, he said, coincided with the Republican Party’s own shift to the right.
“Spitzer said Democrats have mostly remained consistent in their positions on gun control, but there ‘are fewer of those so-called Blue Dog Democrats around who supported less gun control.’ Indeed, in the early to mid-2000s, moderate Democrats from conservative-leaning states such as Arkansas and Louisiana received NRA support, although not at the levels seen in the early 1990s, according to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics.” The GOP has made a choice: clear support of almost anything NRA. Simply, they are on the wrong side of history and demography.
While we are unlikely to see shifts in deeply red states like West Virginia, Mississippi or Alabama anytime soon, traditionally-GOP states with large urban populations – even Texas – are seeing more purple than red. The gun-issue alignment is continuing to erode the GOP hold in places that would most surprise most Republicans. Even notwithstanding an increasingly right wing Supreme Court.
The popular vote in the last presidential election should tell Republicans how America really feels, and the younger-more-liberal-voter demographic wave will become a tsunami in the not-too-distant future. We may even watch new political parties form out of the chaos and polarization from the “elephant-donkey rift.” Gun control just may be the dividing issue that defines party affiliation more than any other. As America turns slowly blue, will it be the red states, not California, that will want out of the dis-United States of America? Time will tell.
I’m Peter Dekom, and the only constant is change… and change does not care who wins and who loses…
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