Congress: 'You are dead to me'

From the archives
This was a column I wrote after the Senate rejected
 expanded background checks in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings

(Mark Barden speaks at press conference)

 

In the aftermath of the shameful Senate vote to maintain the gun show loophole for criminals seeking to buy firearms, a parent of a 7-year-old Sandy Hook victim made a statement in the White House Rose Garden.
Mark Barden, father of a murdered first-grader, Daniel, said that the lobbying of dozens of senators by the Sandy Hook parents was not in vain, despite the crushing outcome. The families victimized by perhaps the most horrific mass shooting in U.S. history, Barden said, are “disappointed but not defeated.” He said the parents traumatized by the massacre in Newtown, Conn., maintain “the determination that change will happen.”

I would suggest that Barden, perhaps shell-shocked by the Senate vote, is politically naïve. All the pieces had fallen into place preceding this dramatic vote on Wednesday, including the courageous move by two senators with “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association – Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin – to lead the charge and take the heat.
This was a watershed moment in congressional history and I would humbly assert that this is what Barden should have said at that White House press conference:

“I have experienced an agonizing, painful death of a young child. My son’s little body was ripped apart in his classroom by a mentally unstable man who fired numerous rounds into each of his victims from an AR-15 military-style weapon.

“As disturbing as that loss was, I now must declare that a cowardly Senate that rejects a modest, common-sense gun law has deflated my faith in American democracy and our republic.
“This was a pragmatic provision that would simply prevent criminals and the mentally ill from purchasing firearms at gun shows and over the Internet. Somehow, polls showing 90 percent public approval did not matter.
“If a cowering Congress cannot muster the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and approve a measure supported by nine in ten Americans, if our elected leaders cannot put overwhelming public support above the threatening tactics of special interest groups, if a filibuster vote – not a simple majority -- means that this bipartisan amendment cannot go forward, then I have no respect for or faith in our elected lawmakers.

“I have to say to Congress: You are dead to me.

“That phrase, in our national lexicon, refers to trusted family members or friends who have repeatedly demonstrated such disappointing behavior, who have become so incorrigible despite numerous second chances, that they deserve to be written off. That seems to fit the current dysfunctional situation on Capitol Hill.
“As members of Congress, you have determined that maintaining a safe seat in the House or Senate is more important than maintaining a safe nation.

“If a piece of compromise legislation supported by a broad, overwhelming majority of the electorate is rejected by an undignified Congress, should we pretend that we still have a functioning democracy? If the NRA or other lobbying groups with outsized political clout and millions of dollars to defeat their congressional opponents control the Capitol, should we continue in 2014 with the charade of House and Senate elections?

“What’s the point?
“Every American must be wondering today how it’s possible that an amendment embraced by the electorate’s Democrats, Republicans, independents and gun owners was summarily defeated.
“In recent months, it was considered nearly impossible, amidst our nation’s red-blue divide, that any issue could enjoy such unprecedented backing. In fact, the polling showed that many Americans assumed that universal background checks to keep guns away from criminals and the mentally deranged was already the practical approach, the law of the land.

“The sheepish senators fretting about a primary challenge sparked by the NRA knew that public sentiment offered another comfort – the polls showed that a majority of that tiny 10 percent who were opposed to Manchin-Toomey said they would not hold their senator’s vote against him, or her. They would not cast a ballot in the next election based solely on this one issue.
“Yet, self-centered senators ducking for cover succumbed to the fear that public support for a gun safety measure – no matter how significant – is no match for the most intense, most noisy pro-gun groups. Those are the agitators who have a stranglehold on the Capitol, who could cost senators their jobs.

“Particularly disturbing in this whole sequence of events is that the NRA resorted to lies to line up their votes. The phony ‘death panels’ created out of whole cloth to oppose Obamacare have morphed into paranoid, ‘slippery slope’ arguments about a national gun registry.
“Countless lawmakers, commentators and NRA operatives claimed that the amendment would lead to a national system of registering guns. The truth was that the bill strengthened current anti-registry language in federal law, making it a 15-year felony for any government entity to compile information about gun purchases.

“The political pathologies that led the polarized Senate to turn their back on greater public safety – failing to close a gaping loophole in current law that allows murderers, rapists, wife-beaters, gang-bangers and the mentally delusional to easily purchase firearms – are appalling. Should these unstable senators be capable of passing a background check, based on mental fitness, to obtain a weapon?
“During the course of the national debate over the gun show loophole, a propaganda video featuring an al-Qaida jihadist surfaced on YouTube. This instructor in the ways of terrorism described how easy it is to obtain a high-powered weapon in America. He advised al-Qaida sympathizers to go to their local expo center gun show and purchase numerous weapons of destruction. He concluded: ‘What are you waiting for?’

“If that doesn’t make our anti-democratic senators squirm, let me ask this: If expanding background checks is a violation of the Second Amendment, why have you not been screaming for a repeal of the existing checks that are required for sales at guns stores?
“When the gun nuts claim that Sens. Toomey and Manchin are traitors, why do they not express anger over the current system of background checks as anti-American and unconstitutional? Why do they not demand repeal?

“The anti-democratic abuse of the Senate filibuster process is also a part of this story. The Toomey-Manchin amendment passed by a 54-46 majority. Yet, under hyper-partisan Senate procedures, that was not enough. ‘Majority rules’ in the Senate now means that anything less than a 60 percent majority is a killer.
“At the same time, the obstructionist Senate vote let the House off the hook. If the legislation had cleared the Senate, this extraordinarily popular proposal would reportedly not even have received a vote on the House floor.

“So, I say to our elected officials: My beautiful child is dead. I cannot bring him back to life.
“But I had hoped, in his memory, and in memorializing the 20 children and six adults who were gunned down in Newtown, that I could take a stand to reduce gun violence in America.

“Instead, I found that in 2013 representative democracy – the will of the people -- is dead in my beloved USA.
“Now, I fear that we cannot bring that enduring rule-to-live-by back to life.”