Source: Politics<\/p>\n
If fallout from the nation\u2019s two most recent mass shootings runs to form, calls for stricter gun laws on the left will meet resistance from the right. Washington will gridlock, and the media will move on.<\/p>\n
But the current debate is taking place under an uncommon alignment of the political stars, creating a unique moment in the arc of gun politics. Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since 2011. Public polling reflects widespread support for background checks and other gun measures<\/a>, while the National Rifle Association \u2014 a traditional power in Republican Party politics \u2014 has been crippled by financial problems and infighting<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the gun reform movement \u2014 a centerpiece of the Democratic Party\u2019s agenda for at least a quarter century \u2014 the question this week has become, if not now, when?<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the moment,\u201d said Shannon Watts, founder of the advocacy group Moms Demand Action. \u201cThe NRA is sidelined by bankruptcy, and we have a gun-sense trifecta in the White House, the Senate and the House.\u201d<\/p>\n The shootings in Boulder, Colo., on Monday and in Georgia last week did not just restart America\u2019s on-again, off-again hostilities over guns. The November election tilted the field in Democrats\u2019 favor. More than after any shooting in the past decade, the party\u2019s response to the killings in Colorado and Georgia will serve as a measure of how much Democrats can achieve when they occupy the commanding heights.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a pivotal moment for gun politics. The history of midterm elections suggests Democrats are at risk of losing the House next year, shrinking their window for legislative victories.<\/p>\n \u201cThe time is definitely now,\u201d said Peter Ambler, executive director of the gun-control group Giffords. \u201cWe can\u2019t wait.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s in no small part due to the changing demographics and voting behavior of Georgia and Colorado that gun reform is on the table in Washington at all. It was the January runoff elections in Georgia, only recently a solidly Republican state, that gave Democrats their functional majority in the Senate.<\/p>\n Colorado, now reliably Democratic after years as a swing state, sent John Hickenlooper to the Senate in November<\/a>, defeating the Republican incumbent, Cory Gardner, by nearly 10 percentage points. And in Colorado, in particular, there are reasons for Democrats to find optimism in the gun reform movement. Nowhere near a bastion of far-left politics, lawmakers there nevertheless have enacted stricter gun laws in recent years<\/a>. So had the city of Boulder, where a locally passed assault weapons ban was blocked by a judge<\/a> earlier this month. Lawmakers are discussing potential legislation in response \u2014 to allow cities to enact more stringent gun laws than the state<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tom Sullivan, a Colorado state lawmaker who sought elected office after his son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, said the climate surrounding gun legislation has \u201cobviously\u201d shifted \u2014 as evidenced by his own election and those of other survivors of victims of gun violence, including Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia, whose teenage son was shot to death in 2012. Gun control was a winning issue for Democrats in some congressional swing districts nationally in the midterm elections in 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can run on this issue, and we can win elections on this issue,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cQuite obviously, the tone has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n Democrats, of course, lack a filibuster-proof majority. And at least one Senate Democrat, West Virginia\u2019s Joe Manchin, hails from one of the most pro-gun states in the nation. But even if legislation ultimately fails in Washington, holding a vote on a major gun reform bill could be politically significant ahead of the midterm elections next year. For Democrats, said Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based pollster, such legislation \u201cwould be, at least to some extent, to get a vote on it and be able to use it in suburban districts\u201d in Colorado and across the country.<\/p>\n Still, Colorado is also the state of Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting congresswoman who said after the Boulder shooting that she would not \u201cblame society at large for the sick actions of one man and I will not allow lawbreakers to dictate the rights of law-abiding citizens.\u201d<\/a> And she is far from alone in her conference. While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he will force a vote on background checks, the legislation\u2019s prospects of drawing the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster appear dim.<\/p>\n In Colorado as it is nationally, said Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican Party chair and longtime party strategist, \u201cIt\u2019s a complicated issue for both parties.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a thorny issue in the suburbs for Republicans,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a thorny issue for Democrats in the rural areas.\u201d<\/p>\n Gun control, like almost everything else, took a back seat in last year\u2019s elections to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic and then-President Donald Trump\u2019s handling of it. With fewer people gathering, public mass shootings were down last year, too<\/a>, according to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n But as people have begun to reemerge in public, a gunman killed eight people at three Atlanta-area spas last week. On Monday, a shooter killed 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder \u2014 including at least one person who was in line for a vaccine<\/a>. And for the first time in a decade, advocates of stricter gun laws had a Democratic president and a Democratic-controlled Congress \u2014 though narrowly in the Senate \u2014 to turn to.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we begin to emerge from Covid, there is this emerging sense of foreboding now among Americans \u2026 that what we\u2019re going to return to is going to be constant headlines about gun violence,\u201d Ambler said. \u201cWe can\u2019t let that be the American experience. That can\u2019t be how we as a nation emerge from the trauma of Covid. We can\u2019t go reeling from pandemic to epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cIn some way, shape or form, the Senate as an institution needs to respond to this crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Mathew Littman, a Democratic strategist and executive director of the gun reform group 97 Percent, said of universal background checks that \u201cit\u2019s ridiculous that it hasn\u2019t happened. Absolutely ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n The gun control debate has put more pressure on Democrats to abandon the legislative filibuster in the Senate, broadening the range of constituencies lobbying for the change. Lonnie Phillips, whose daughter was killed in Aurora and who now advocates on behalf of survivors of gun violence, said, \u201cThe best thing that can happen right now \u2014 the one thing I would give everything up for \u2014 is get rid of the filibuster so we can pass some laws.\u201d<\/p>\n But Phillips and other gun control advocates are frustrated not only with the Senate, but with President Joe Biden, who has yet to fulfill a campaign promise to take unilateral action on gun violence<\/a>. Phillips\u2019 wife, Sandy, said that \u201cwe were so hopeful that the president would follow through on his promises on Day One. And that hasn\u2019t happened.\u201d<\/p>\n A first-hand witness to political difficulties surrounding the issue, Biden was an author of the now-expired assault weapons ban while in the Senate in 1994. Later, as vice president, he assumed an instrumental role in a major push for gun control legislation<\/a> following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, the failure of which in the Senate marked one of the most significant defeats of President Barack Obama\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n Biden said Tuesday that he does not want to \u201cwait another minute\u201d to address gun violence, calling on Congress to act while his administration considers measures<\/a> he could take on his own.<\/p>\n If Democrats seizing control of Washington raised the expectations of gun reform advocates, it will also make any defeat that much more painful.<\/p>\n Looking back over 12 years of disappointment on the issue, Lonnie Phillips said, \u201cObama couldn\u2019t get it done, and of course, Trump made it worse, if that\u2019s possible,\u201d adding that Biden \u201chasn\u2019t lived up to his promise.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re at a frustrating point.\u201d<\/p>\n