Time and again, Mitch McConnell chooses to do nothing about guns. That must change.
It’s been 19 days (on Sunday) since 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered, ripped to shreds by bullets so powerful that the children’s bodies had to be identified with DNA.
It’s been 19 days and many decades since Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell has done anything to address gun violence.
He’s made a career of avoiding and defeating small, commonsense measures to make us and our children safer from gun violence. As many media outlets have documented, McConnell’s opposition to gun control laws goes back to 1989.
That year, after a mass shooting that killed eight at the Standard Gravure printing plant in his home town of Louisville, McConnell said, “We need to be careful about legislating in the middle of a crisis.”
After 59 people were shot and killed by one man in Las Vegas, he said: “the investigation has not even been completed. And I think it’s premature to be discussing legislative solutions, if there are any.”
When 20 children and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Minority Leader McConnell said the incident “stands out in its awfulness.” But in 2013, a bipartisan package to expand background checks and ban assault weapons failed because the minority party led by McConnell flipped the switch on the filibuster. The bill might have passed on a regular vote, but it could not reach the 60-vote threshold required.
After an 18-year-old shot and killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery story, McConnell called him a “deranged young man,” and said racism was “abhorrent,” but failed to denounced the “Great Replacement Theory” cited by the shooter and to make any mention of gun law changes.
By the time of the Uvalde massacre, McConnell’s response? “Words simply fail,” he said.
Action, too, apparently. On Wednesday, the House passed a package of bills that are expected to stall in the Senate. This time around, McConnell has handed negotiations for a bipartisan package of small changes, such as expanding background checks to gun shows and Internet sales, over to Sen. John Cornyn, but its success or failure still lies largely in his hands. But on the same day an 11-year-old from Uvalde told a House panel how she had to smear a classmate’s blood over her face and play dead on her classroom floor, McConnell appeared much more exercised about federal protection for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house.
McConnell is instead pivoting to the need for more resources for mental health and school safety. Sure, more resources for mental health would be great. But arming teachers, closing doors and making our children submit to active shooter drills are not answers to a problem we understand all too well.
Everyone, including McConnell, knows this problem starts and ends with one thing: Guns. Too many guns, too many assault rifles, not enough simple laws in place to fix them. You’re either with the kids or with the killers.
Everyone knows he is a lackey to the gun lobby and will do nothing. Since 2016, he’s received $72,000 from the NRA; a total of close to $1.2 million in his career.
Why are we singling out McConnell on this topic?
He’s from Kentucky, for one, and who better to hold him accountable than a home state newspaper? Even now as Senate Minority Leader, he is the de facto leader of the Republican Party, one of the most powerful players Washington, D.C. has ever seen. If all goes as predicted in November, he could very well re-ascend to the Senate’s majority post.
There could be no more important movement than to keep our children from being gunned down in their classrooms, or to prevent people from being killed for the color of their skin. Gun violence is a “uniquely American tragedy,” as U.S. Rep Carolyn Maloney said during hearings on Wednesday.
We are not talking about radical proposals. It is not unreasonable to believe that until you’re old enough to drink, neither should you be allowed to buy a semi-automatic rifle. Banning the sale of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition would not affect hunters or people defending their homes. If these two laws had been in place, neither the Buffalo nor the Alvade killers would have been able to buy a gun or used an extended magazine.
Expanding background checks to Internet sales and gun shows is hardly extreme. Since McConnell now appears to be concerned about mental health, red flag laws could be used to remove guns from someone who has made threats. They won’t end gun violence, but they could stop some of it.
It is merely gaslighting by the more extreme factions of the NRA and profiteering weapons makers to think that any of these measures would somehow harm law-abiding gun owners.
McConnell knows this, and perhaps he could surprise us by passing some small yet symbolic gesture like expanded background checks. It’s been done before by no less a Republican icon than President Ronald Reagan, who in 1991 wrote an editorial in the New York Times in support of the Brady Law, which created the first background check law.
But we’re not naive. Mitch McConnell’s career is best understood as one that amasses personal power over principle while serving the needs of the few and mighty. He supported the Supreme Court case, Citizens United that made unfettered corporate donations the nexus of our political system; he expanded use of the filibuster, which has allowed the few to hold the many hostage on issues like gun violence. He believes and has always believed that the NRA is more important than Texas school children or Buffalo grocery shoppers. At 80, he will not change his tactics. But it’s important that his constituents understand that he has the power to change policy and he simply refuses to do so.
We will keep reminding you.