The Second Amendment Hive is Coming For Me Next
The Second Amendment Hive is Coming For Me Next
Just a heads up: I do make a quick Josh Hawley dick joke in today's newsletter. Don't think too much about it!! I just felt I had to let everyone know in advance to be safe <3
Well well well, if it isn’t the rising wave of gun violence in America back again.
That’s actually not a true statement because gun violence was one of the few things in America that went unhindered by the COVID-19 pandemic: the Washington Post recently reported that “in 2020, gun violence killed nearly 20,000 Americans, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, more than any other year in at least two decades.”
The number of mass shootings also went up, with 611 occurring in 2020. For reference, the year with the next highest count was 2019 which saw 417 mass shootings. As shocking as this is to say, I did do the math on this and found that 194 more mass shootings happened during the year we were all supposed to be inside than any other year.
Gun violence really looked at COVID and said:
Before I hyperfocus on the Mass Shooting Cinematic Universe, I should note that gun reform experts, like Mark Barden of the Sandy Hook Promise, warn that “high-profile mass shootings such as [the recent ones in Atlanta and Boulder] tend to overshadow the instances of everyday violence that account for most gun deaths, potentially clouding some people’s understanding of the problem and complicating the country’s response” (x).
Whether it takes place in the form of a murder, a mass shooting, or a suicide, gun violence in America feels omnipresent.
But because we’ve already used up our One Free Sad Newsletter this quarter, today we’re not going to focus on the depressing numbers and casualties of gun violence in America. No, my friends: turn your frown into a scowl because it’s time to rage against the NRA-funded machine.
This week, we’re going to break down the public opinions on guns, the arguments against gun control legislation at the federal level, and why in the absolute hell they keep persisting and dominating despite, you know, the fact that we clearly need some gun regulation in America.
Talking About Numbers After 7 Weeks of Telling You All That I Can’t Do Math
As many of you may know from my subpar jokes, I am a Harvard girl now. On my quest to be the Elle Woods of public policy, I’ve looked at public opinion in the conversation around guns and gun ownership. A few of the facts that I’ve learned are notable here, like that 3 out of every 10 Americans own a gun and 4 out of every 10 Americans live in a gun-owning home (Pew Research Center, 2017). So, by a simple calculation, a large amount —but not the majority— of Americans own guns.
I feel like this goes without saying, but opinions on guns are highly partisan: 74% of gun owners believe owning a gun is essential to their freedom, with a whopping 91% of gun-owning Republicans agreeing to that statement but only 43% of gun-owning Democrats saying the same.
However, following the Parkland shooting in 2018, an NPR/Ipsos poll found an increased amount of bipartisan support for stricter gun control laws with 75% of respondents saying they were supportive of gun law reform. One of the most frequently proposed gun control policies, requiring background checks for gun buyers, had a massive 94% of bipartisan support.
While it may be hard to believe, 2018 was three years ago at this point which gives these numbers enough time to have changed. The most recent poll I could find on gun opinions was conducted by Gallup between September 30 and October 15, 2020. By then, only 57% of respondents favored stricter gun laws which, unlike gun ownership numbers, is a majority.
Even so, why are there STILL no new gun control laws?
Listen, if there was an easy answer to this question, there would be an easy solution to fix it and if there was an easy fix, I wouldn’t be breaking anything down, to be sure.
For starters, when we’re talking about a lack of gun control laws, we mean at the federal level. Individual states have their own gun laws, with some like California’s being much stricter than others: the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave California an A rating for, among other things, instituting universal background checks, creating domestic violence gun laws, and restricting assault weapons.
In contrast, Missouri received an F rating because, as Sarah Kendzior states in her book Hiding In Plain Sight, it is “the state with the loosest restrictions on both money and guns. Those with fantasies of a lawless world need look no further than Missouri to have a sudden longing for regulation.”
Regulating states as one entity when their laws vary this much is a challenging undertaking which is made as hard as Josh Hawley’s dick when the NRA gets involved.
The National Rifle Association is old as dirt, bankrupt, under investigation for fraud among other charges, and yet still manages to exert incredible influence over blocking any gun control legislation.
Only ⅕ or 19% of gun owners belong to the NRA which means the advocacy group really doesn’t speak for many gun owners at all. However, as John Oliver explains in the video above, the NRA’s members are excitable and function under a simple ideology for a simple goal: rejecting anything that would change what already exists. That perfect storm allows them to take action often and forcefully.
The NRA’s messaging has skewed the conversations around guns by having their rabidly devoted base continuously promote misleading information and bad faith arguments, while the organization simultaneously funds enough politicians to block any gun law reform legislation.
As I’ve mentioned before, Senator Chris Murphy gave a nearly 15-hour filibuster and remains one of the most outspoken gun control supporters in the Senate. This often puts him on the receiving end of misinformation campaigns.
Stan Culture But For Guns
The Second Amendment Hive would have you believe that “more guns make people more safe.” Remember sweet Marj’s warm wishes for the girls last week? Her little “‘if you want to protect women, make sure women are gun owners and know how to defend themselves… That’s the greatest defense for women’”? You’ll all be shocked to learn that MTG has been drinking Koolaid from a number of sources like the NRA and has been repeating their messaging as if it were her own, a phenomenon not unlike the Trump-Fox News feedback loop.
As the BBC writes, this mentality
relies on, and staunchly defends, a disputed interpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which it argues gives US citizens the rights to bear arms without any government oversight.
Much of right-wing ideology is rooted in a desire for decreased federal government involvement and the preservation of “the way things were.”
…but by combining this mentality with a sprinkling of fear-mongering that when the government does intervene, it’s to take away your protection and leave you vulnerable to whoever Laura Ingraham is telling you to be scared of tonight, groups like the NRA and their besties have cultivated that previously mentioned devoted base as well as non-member gun owners who will do anything to help defend the “Second Amendment.”
As everyone knows, I am a constitutional scholar as I did take one class on the First Amendment in college, so I have the authority to point out that the Second Amendment calls for “a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Let me put it this way:
On top of getting an A+ rating for being right-wing shit stirrers, the NRA is a powerful donor come election season which is why they continue to receive such warm welcomes from politicians despite being kinda eh these days. The group spends around $250,000,000 per year which —and I’m not 100% sure this is how money works— is probably why they’re bankrupt. Not even the Giudices spent that much!!!1 About $3 million of that amount per year goes directly towards gun policy lobbying but “that is only the recorded contributions to lawmakers however, and considerable sums are spent elsewhere via PACs and independent expenditures - funds which are difficult to track” (x).
According to The Trace, a news outlet focused solely on covering gun violence, by August 2020, the NRA had already spent $28.5 million in funding both for pro-gun candidates and against anti-gun candidates. In contrast, The Trace found that gun reform groups like Everytown, Brady Law Center, and Giffords Law Center had only spent $23.9 collectively in funding by that point.
But what does all this funding do?
Among other things, it influences politicians to vote as they did on two reform bills in 2016 after Senator Chris Murphy’s filibuster. It led Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t bring a bill to close the Charleston loophole to the floor years ago (once again) despite background checks being widely popular amongst everyone. It goes to perpetuating the misconception that common-sense reforms will be a “slippery slope” into gun confiscation programs— although that might not be such a bad thing.
As the SparkNotes of real-life political proceedings, my little newsletter isn't equipped to get into the windy history of campaign finance and interest groups and lobbying. But I can state the obvious from a simple Google search of the NRA which is that their funding is essentially offering money to politicians to vote against the interests of the American people.
I don’t know about you all but that sounds ickier to me than the words “Josh Hawley’s dick.”2
Where is the silver lining, Emily?
Friends, I don’t know if there is one tonight. I’m hopeful that maybe there will be some traction with the two reform bills that have passed in the House but if we learned anything from our filibuster chat, that bitch has to go before the Senate passes anything this controversial.
In a disturbing display of how persistent this problem is in America, there is an article from 2017 in the Washington Post that was originally posted in 2015 with a message that still rings true today: in addition to influence from interest groups like the NRA, the biggest hindrance to instituting gun reform is the issue attention cycle:
Mass shootings often generate significant media coverage immediately after they occur. But as time goes by, journalists move on to other stories, leading the public to grow less concerned with gun control. (x)
For there to truly be a reprieve from gun violence in America, we need more than a global pandemic. We first need to get rid of the filibuster, then we need to reform the laws surrounding money in politics (which by then, fingers crossed, the NRA will have faded into irrelevance although they’re tricky bastards so you never know), then we need to actually to talk about gun violence as it happens every day instead of only when a mass shooting occurs, then maybe we can finally pass the gun reform this country so desperately needs.
Yes, I am watching Real Housewives of New Jersey from the beginning. Thank you for asking!!
Two for flinching!!!