Democrats, gun control, and the centrist fantasy
If there is one relief after an election, it is that for a few minutes, I no longer have to hear that it is my duty to vote for either a Democrat or a Republican. The fans of each party have the decency—usually—to wait at least until the newly elected office holders get installed before pushing the false dichotomy once more. Of course, now comes the period of interpretation in which all and sundry—myself included—seek to explain what happened and how it supports our particular school of political thought.
Sitting here as at least a friendly visitor in the Fabian socialist seats—i.e., the position that would like to believe that we can make progress without burning everything down—I see nothing in this year’s election to indicate that as a nation, we have suffered enough to shake us away from the wishful thinking that if we do not change too much, everything will be all right. I was told that there would be an uprising of women to reverse the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, and while several states passed constitutional amendments to protect abortion, or in the case of Kentucky rejected an amendment to deny that the procedure is a right, but the U.S. Senate remains closely divided, and if the remaining races turn out as anticipated, the House will be narrowly in the hands of the Republicans, suggesting that once again, Americans prefer to allow the supreme law of a given political entity to take care of things, rather than requiring legislatures to work. As a country, we have shown no indication that our broken healthcare system or the looming existential threat of climate change are enough to spur us to act.
If the Democrats would be interested in hearing my advice, however, I do have a suggestion that could win them some more elections, presuming that they wish to achieve that end: Drop gun control.
Regular readers here will not be surprised, but I come today with the backing of the votes in several states to make my case. Consider first the vote in Texas, a state whose governor tried to blame a broad failure of the local electrical grid on efforts to create green energy. That governor, Greg Abbott, won re-election, defeating Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who made his name on the national stage by calling for confiscations of AR-15s and similar firearms. O’Rourke continued attacks on gun rights in this year’s gubernatorial race, adding a call to overturn the recent law that moved Texas into being a constitutional carry state. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams, a candidate who has been treated as a rising star by the party faithful, pushed a softer plan of more background checks and more limits on legal carry and lost to Brian Kemp for a second time. And in my current state of residence, Arkansas, Chris Jones offered a vague set of platitudes about protecting gun rights and promoting safety by curtailing the same and lost to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican who would like to be the next Donald Trump.
To be sure, the races for governor in Oregon, Massachusetts, and Arizona went to Democrats, and while the first two of those are no surprise, in the third, Katie Hobbs, the Democratic candidate, said little about gun control beyond expressing outrage over the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out New York State’s onerous concealed carry licensing scheme, despite the fact that her state, for now, vies for being the least restrictive regarding any aspect of gun ownership and possession in the nation. And I do not wish to commit a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy by insisting that in the cases of O’Rourke, Abrams, and Jones it was gun control alone that was the deciding factor. What I will say is that for O’Rourke and Abrams, two prominent Democrats who have made support for restrictions on gun rights into key planks of their platforms, gun control was not a winning proposition, at least not in gun friendly states. Greg Abbott even won the vote in Uvalde County—site of the recent school shooting that killed nineteen students and two teachers—by by over sixty percent.
Given the Supreme Court’s pronouncement, led by Clarence Thomas, that the Second Amendment must be treated as a basic right that is equal to speech and the like, unless Democrats are willing to add justices to the high court or to attempt a revision of the Bill of Rights, gun control is effectively dead, but for some lingering spasms. Still, the party has had since the 2008 Heller ruling to recognize the direction in the country’s judiciary and longer than that to notice the trends in carry licensing and in support for gun rights generally while doing next to nothing with regard to getting legislation passed in this century on the national level. The same is true about abortion, though their inactivity there was in neglecting to protect the right in question, rather than to seek to violate it.
I am left to wonder if Democrats want to do anything but raise money and run on matters that they supposedly care about. There is an inherent laziness in centrism—and a fear of having to take a stand for anything—but of greater significance is the corruption of privilege, the attitude that once politicians have experienced the status of office, they are somehow entitled to continue in that blessed state.
If Democrats want to get things like universal healthcare and higher education, a living wage, and protection for abortion rights in a sustainable environment done, they need to fight for those things. Dropping gun control permanently would make that struggle easier in states that do not appreciate having gun rights attacked.
But I cannot avoid the conclusion that the Democratic Party is nothing but a traction city of the type found in Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines Quartet, a machine whose existence is its only justification for continuing to exist.