For more than a year following the swearing in of the 111th Congress in 2009, Democrats held strong majorities in both houses of Congress. They passed the stimulus, the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law and Obamacare, among other major pieces of legislation. One thing they didn’t even consider was gun control.
Why not?
For the same reason Congress hasn’t passed major gun control legislation in more than twenty years: Because there just isn’t much appetite among lawmakers for the types of extreme proposals liberals typically put forward on guns.
Despite some high profile cases, gun violence is also a problem that’s getting better, not worse. FBI data from 2014 show that gun homicides have declined about 20 percent over the last few years, from more than 10,000 to just over 8,000 a year.
It was against this backdrop, and after the terrorist attack in Orlando by a shooter who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, that House Democrats held a 25-hour sit-in this week demanding votes on two gun control bills. One would expand background checks to all commercial sales. The other would prevent people on certain federal terrorist watch lists from buying guns. Similar measures were defeated in the Senate last week after a 15-hour Democratic filibuster.
The House Democrats’ sit-in wasn’t the first such event in recent history — Republicans held one on energy policy in 2008. But it could be called the first congressional sit-in of the social media age. And it was just as frivolous as a typical teenager’s tweet.
While both Democratic measures are plagued with constitutional problems, the watch list proposal was especially troubling because it clearly violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. As we have editorialized before, when it comes to guns, the Democrats have problems with much of the Bill of Rights.
The Democrats cloaked their stand on guns in the rhetoric of the civil rights movement; at one point they began singing the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”
Civil rights icon John Lewis helped organize the sit-in, which was ironic since Lewis was once mistakenly placed on a terrorist watch list and was even a signatory on a 2014 letter complaining about lack of due process on such lists.
It’s difficult to get the ACLU and NRA to agree on much of anything but they both oppose the terror watch list bill on constitutional grounds.
By the time the 25 hours of chanting, singing and occupying of the House floor ended on Thursday, Democrats hadn’t accomplished anything legislatively. But that was never the point.Their true goal wasn’t about policy but about portraying congressional Republicans as unreasonable on gun safety — and of course about raising money.
John Lewis sent fundraising emails during the sit-in. In one he decried House Speaker Paul Ryan’s refusal to hold a vote, and asking supporters to “chip in immediately” to “defeat these AWFUL Republicans — NOW.”
An email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s pledged “to defeat the cowardly Republicans who refuse any action on gun reform once and for all.” It asked supporters, “Will you answer John Lewis’s call to action with $1 before the sit-in ends?” A later DCCC email announced that all “gifts” would be “triple-matched.”
Democrats insisted that the sit-in wasn’t a fundraising stunt. But, as Ryan said, “If this is not a political stunt then why are they trying to raise money off this?”
Democrats routinely rail against the “broken” politics of Washington. But they’re the ones driving the dysfunction this time. They’re also the ones who hold up civil liberties as sacrosanct only to dismiss them when it suits their political needs.
Democrats are vowing to continue their protest when the House returns from the July 4th recess, at which point they no doubt will also resume exploiting mass violence to raise money for themselves.
