The debate about guns and gun violence, like all virtually all political debates in the country today, is marked by starkly polarized views. As the Pew Research Center reports:
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are far more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to see gun violence as a major problem (73% vs. 18%). And nearly two-thirds of Americans who describe their community as urban (65%) say the same, compared with 47% of suburbanites and 35% of those who live in rural areas.
In spite of the continuing cycle of mass shootings, Pew reports that Republican support for strengthening gun regulations has decreased since 2019. This reflects increasing polarization of the issue, as the substance of the debate has come to have less valence than the symbolism. Democrats are for gun reform; Republicans are opposed. That governs support for or opposition to any proposal, details be damned.
An exception is the popular support for closing the loopholes requiring background checks for gun sales. Pew reports that 70% of Republicans and 92% of Democrats favor this change. (There are a handful of other exceptions.)
As polarization increases, fewer Republicans can be expected to continue to support even modest reforms. But we're not there yet. Right now even Republicans support closing the gun show loophole. Yet Republicans in office (and in conservative media) consistently deflect proposals to change gun laws. They insist that Democrats are guilty of a breach of decorum if proposals are articulated too soon after a mass killing. (After the shock has worn off and the media has moved on, they can safely ignore the calls to act.) They insist that if any single proposal would not prevent every single mass shooting, then there's no point in legislating at all. And they raise ideas unrelated to guns -- such as blaming video games for gun violence, or pointing a finger at too many doors in schools, or bemoaning the lack of mental health care -- and then charge that Democratic proposals focusing on guns prove that Democrats don't want to solve the problem.
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott played the mental health card at his Uvalde press conference -- "We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health" -- though just two months earlier he had cut $211 million from the state budget for the agency overseeing mental health. This, in the state of Texas, which can hardly boast of ample health care for its citizens:
Texas ranked 42nd overall in our measure of health system performance — in large part because of how hard it is for people in the state to get and afford the health care they need. It has the highest uninsured rate in the country, and fewer of its residents report having a regular source of health care — an important marker of how well the health system is working. Texas also has the largest number of residents who said they skipped health care they needed because of cost, and health insurance costs take a bigger share of people’s incomes in Texas than in almost any other state. Texas is also one of 14 states that still have not expanded Medicaid under provisions of the Affordable Care Act, leaving millions of working people uninsured.
We can count on Texas Senator Ted Cruz -- “Have one door into and out of the school and have that one door, armed police officers at that door” -- to oppose any effort to close the gun loophole. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to filibuster any such proposal. Why? Why stand in the way of such a popular law, supported by more than two-thirds of Republicans?
Culture war, not public policy solutions
Because the Republican Party has no interest in public policy solutions to social problems (even mass killings of elementary school kids). That's not what wins elections for Republicans. To endorse universal background checks, or a ban on the sale of assault rifles even to 18-year olds, or any other baby step to preventing gun violence, is to give up a culture war issue and allow the Democrats a win. (Note that while the Uvalde shooter legally purchased two assault rifles just after his 18th birthday, he could not have legally purchased either a handgun or an alcoholic beverage in Texas before turning 21.)
And because increasingly the Republican Party has come to rely on the support of extremists that the party would have rejected even a few years ago. As recently as January 2019, House Republican leaders removed New York's Steve King from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees to distance the caucus from his white supremacist comments. Even the Senate's Mitch McConnell offered condemnation.
There is a faction of Americans ideologically committed to white nationalism and violence to achieve their ends who (since Trump) have been welcomed into the Republican coalition. The Proud Boys would not have been embraced by George W. Bush (or any prior Republican president in the past half century) -- but after Donald Trump, extremist groups, conspiracy theorists, the January 6 rioters, as well as folks enamored of military assault rifles and itching for a confrontation with government, are no longer kept at arm's length.
Watching House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy defer to the crackpot agitators in his caucus (in contrast to his actions regarding Steve King) illustrates the increasing dependence of the GOP to extremists on the right. Meanwhile, McConnell can be counted on to protect far right Senators (and those who depend on far right voters) by preventing an up or down vote on anything that resembles a bipartisan solution to the problem of gun violence (or any issue that touches on the culture war). Simply put: preventing offense to fringe constituencies trumps preventing mass shootings of school children in the GOP's election strategy.
As Jonathan Chait has noted in another context: "Most Republican officials regard these figures as kooks, threatening to derail the party’s agenda with unproductive messages and tactics. But they also don’t want to risk a rupture with their allies."
Continuing mass murders at the hands of assailants brandishing military weapons -- in our schools, churches, supermarkets, movie theaters, night clubs, country music concerts ...) -- is a consequence of the culture war that Republicans rely on. The growing death toll, year after year, month after month, is collateral damage resulting from a strategically focused Republican Party.
Texas, a deadly laboratory of democracy
Meanwhile, at the state level, Republicans are intent on passing measures that stop just short of celebrating gun violence. In Texas, after the Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, El Paso, and Midland-Odessa shootings, the governor and legislature were undeterred in their continuing push to loosen gun restrictions. The campaign to encourage more widespread gun ownership and more public spaces with guns present has been unrelenting:
In 2011, the state banned public and private employers from prohibiting employees from stashing guns in the cars in their parking lots. In 2016, the state expanded open carry laws (in opposition to law enforcement officials) for licensed gun owners and required public universities to grant licensed gun owners the right to carry concealed weapons in dorms, classrooms, and campus buildings. In 2019, the state removed the cap on the number of school guards who could be armed and clarified the law to allow carrying guns into places of worship.
In 2021: the state granted everyone over 21 the right to carry a handgun in public with no permit and no training. Previously, state law required fingerprinting, at least 4 to 6 hours of training, and passing a written exam and a shooting proficiency text in order to get a gun license. The state a passed a Second Amendment sanctuary state bill designed to supersede any legislation that might (improbably) pass at the federal level. But the state wasn't done yet. Also in 2021:
Lawmakers also doubled down on gun rights when they approved bills that would eliminate the governor’s power to ban gun sales during an emergency, prohibit big state and local government contracts “that discriminate against the firearm or ammunition industries” and make it legal for gun owners to bring weapons into their hotel rooms.
The Legislature also passed a measure to allow school boards to let school marshals carry guns on their person instead of being required to keep them locked up, among other gun rights proposals.
The 2021 session of the state legislature was the first since the El Paso and Midland-Odessa shootings, which prompted "Republican leaders at the time to express an uncharacteristic openness to some gun control measures backed by Democrats."
That didn't happen of course. And it's safe to say that the bills that Republicans pushed through were not designed to prevent gun violence so much as to cater to an angry faction of the Republican base. It's a faction that doesn't represent most Republicans, even in Texas. But it's a critical portion of the voters who are most likely to cast ballots in Republican primary elections. And it's critical for Republican politicians to guard against an opponent running to their right in a Republican primary, not to let anyone (no matter how far outside the mainstream) outflank them in waging a culture war.
These bills were all about owning the liberals. The more outrageous, the less sensible, the better. They signaled that the Republican leadership in the state would not let mass gun deaths deter them from catering to an increasingly extreme fringe.
Texas is representative of many red states. Other states have and will follow a similar path. And increasingly, so will the federal government if Republicans get their way. They already control the Supreme Court, which can be expected next month to restrict the rights of states to regulate firearms (disregarding genuine respect for the language of the Constitution or for American historical practice stretching back to the founding).
[Post revised and expanded May 30, 2022.]