Are We Making Progress Against the NRA?

The Times has an op-ed today arguing yes, that Republicans are leaving the politicized gun world as a response to the organizing of recent years.

The safety movement was just reaching critical mass in early 2018 when the Parkland kids rose up. Victims refusing victimhood, they drew 1.4 million to 2.2 million demonstrators across the country to the March for Our Lives — one of the largest protests in American history. The vital missing element was restored: hope. Then they converted hope into action that fall by helping flip the House from Republican to Democratic control, finally demonstrating that gun safety was no longer politically toxic; it could help candidates win.

Until the Parkland uprising, I was a doubter, too. I had covered the Columbine shooting as a reporter and wrote a book about it. Children kept being shot. But two decades later, I spent nearly a year with the Parkland kids when I was researching another book, and I watched them team with Giffords and Everytown, supercharging their efforts.

The N.R.A. is not vanquished, but it is walking wounded. The primary battleground over gun legislation has been the statehouses, where Parkland sparked a startling reversal. After decades of getting trounced by the N.R.A. on state legislation, activists saw 67 gun safety laws passed at the state level in 2019, compared with nine pro-gun laws. This year, 45 new gun safety laws have been adopted at the state level, while 95 percent of gun-lobby-linked bills have been blocked, according to an Everytown report.

Our power must be real now, because Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, warned his conference it was. Before the vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act this June, Mr. McConnell told his conference the game had changed. In a closed-door session, his team presented stunning internal polling of gun-owning households. He summarized it for reporters: “Support for the provisions of the framework is off the charts, overwhelming.”

And with that, the architect of the gun safety blockade in Congress blew a hole in it. He needed to peel off 10 of his senators, and he got 15. The law strengthens background checks, especially for people under age 21 and provides funding to carry out red flag laws and for mental health, school safety and violence interrupter programs.

That was just a start. Our anger, trained on Congress, can propel a string of initiatives to finally bring America’s shameful mass-shooting era nearer to a close.

Maybe.

I am still pretty skeptical. I think a few things are happening. First, Wayne LaPierre’s personal corruption has hamstrung the NRA to an extent here. That’ll be a fun obit to publish and you better believe it is tanned, rested, and ready to post. Second, what has happened is that gun control has become incredibly politicized and is the type of issue that might motivate moronic swing voters in the suburbs who are your Evers-Johnson or Kemp-Warnock voters. There may some evidence that gun extremism, in swing states, can hurt a far-right candidate. That’s something I guess.

But I really have to wait and see it for meaningful gun legislation to pass. Some of that is my the experience watching this issue my entire life of personally hating guns. Some of it is just watching the Republican Party and knowing lots of pro-gun voters in my family and how they think. So yeah, there we might be all the way to a space where your pretty far right but not total extremists might vote for some exceedingly minimal gun safety legislation. I guess that’s a step in the right direction. Does it put us even close to the point of doing the necessary things to stop the massacres? No. Or I don’t think so anyway. Hope am I wrong.