#96 - Gun Control & the Third Party Paradox

Content warning: this essay is about gun control. While no graphic descriptions of gun violence are present, there are upsetting discussions and statistics included.

“How are the Republicans just so much better at voter mobilization?”

“Have you considered they’re just actually better at voter suppression?”

Oh. Yeah. That’s right!

Politics has been feeling particularly hopeless these days, which is why I think that this country might actually be ready to consider something that you may even call a cornerstone of democracy: having more than two parties.

Because there is one issue that is so large it could break the sound barrier and finally bestow this nation with…options. Something that the first president actually called for. (If we’re going to deify the founding fathers—who were staunchly anti-theocracy—we may as well be accurate.)

Anyway, the uniting issue is gun control.

We’ve reached beyond saturation on mass shootings. Americans are scared. Gun owners who even last year wouldn’t have gotten on board with reasonable gun control are now vocally asking for it because they’re tired of being demonized for their hobby (of amassing and using lethal weapons in order to gain some sort of “rush” that is mostly defined by a falsely enhanced masculinity because we for some reason always assign external power as masculine).

I just think that when a society is actively failing its most vulnerable members, it no longer gets to call itself a society.

Americans are discovering extremely quickly just how many rights we had assumed were iron-clad are suddenly back on the table.

Child labor, railroad regulations, compulsive free public education. I would say abortion but that was never off the table of rights to be immediately eradicated.

It feels like we’re back in the 1800s discovering the wonderous combination of steam and wrought iron but it’s so much more frightening because our governing body is so old and out of touch that they literally don’t know how to open their own emails and yet are being asked to regulate the most powerful learning algorithm ever invented.

(The Silent Generation has more representation in Congress than millennials and Gen Z btw. Silents and Boomers combined make up 80% of Congress.)

Republicans are gaming the system.

They’re judge-shopping bullshit “women are too traumatized from their elective abortions to sue over the pill that is so beyond safe we can’t even pretend that’s what this bill is about” bills, they’re closing polling places, and allowing voter intimidation from the former illegitimate twice-impeached currently indicted president to continuously create incredibly unsafe situations for poll workers. (It’s almost like they hope we won’t show up next time.)

And it feels like the other party isn’t doing anything. And when they do, it feels hollow. They tell us to vote, we do, and then it turns out the person elected is actually just there to take money from corporate interests and ignore their constituents because their votes and their money pale in comparison to the corporate interests and lobbyist cash flowing into the DNC “war chest” that only gets accessed by the Good Dems who Fall In Line with what leadership wants.

I believe people when they campaign that they’re going to change the system, that they’re going to Washington to change things to fight for the workers, for healthcare, for progressive rights. And then they get there and the system eats them up and suddenly they’re voting for bills that they spoke out against during their campaign. And it breaks my heart, but then I vote for them again because they’re a better option than the fascist they’re running against (duh), and so the feedback loop continues.

We need more people with laser focus. I want a candidate who won’t shut up about energy policy and wedges it somewhere in every. single. bill. that goes through. We have the solutions, we don’t have to invest in fossil fuels just because those companies pay a lot of money to not have to reconsider what type of energy they produce. Pivot baby pivot! Oil rigs are one of the most dangerous places to work on earth and you know where I bet isn’t? A solar panel factory.

I think one of the major issues is campaign finance reform but we can’t expect the people who already have these jobs to figure out how to actually do a better job and win votes by appealing to the most constituents instead of who can court the highest number of special interests (& the money that accompanies them).

I’m tired of having policies hung over my head as a voting strategy. Figure. it. out. Pass bills. What is a house whip for if not whipping some material up that may or may not be used to pressure certain members from Arizona and West Virginia to allow the Dems to abolish the bullshit modern filibuster where no one even has to be on the floor in order for it to be in effect?

(Am I advocating for blackmail? Yeah, kinda. But the political kind and for the greater good only, okay??)

Anyway, I don't think I'm alone in the frustration I feel—the system has been rotted for a long time, but we didn't have the numbers to overpower the massive boomer voting block but we do now because gen z shows up for elections and they're extremely motivated (particularly around gun control because school shootings defined their school experience in a completely horrific way). It’s made them determined—however, age-wise they’re not able to hold the presidency and I know everyone hates millennials but I do think we're the right generation for the job. We grew up post-Columbine and I know the reverberation was felt throughout my childhood. Back when we used to take children's media seriously I remember Nickelodeon had a nightly panel and talk-backs with kids so they could process it in an age-appropriate forum.

Columbine was a unique horror that we mourned as a nation. For weeks and months and years. I can’t even name all of the schools that have had a mass shooting occur this year. There have been 14 of them. It’s only April.

A functioning society is defined by its ability to protect its most vulnerable population. The fact that children are most likely to die by gunfire is absolutely a failure. We have failed.

(We have also continuously failed the disabled community more obviously than ever before. This country rushed to declare the pandemic over in order to protect corporate interests rather than rush to protect people from getting ill. The lack of increased quality air ventilation, ongoing abolishment of mask mandates (including in hospitals????), and the corporate real estate-backed “return to the office” campaigns are among our largest failures.)

Gun deaths are always gratuitous and no right to think of ourselves as a developed nation as long as our gun laws are written by the NRA rather than those elected to write laws at the behest of the protection of its citizens.

The NRA by the way—what the fuck is going on there?

Maria Butina? Did we forget about her? I know a lot's been going on but that seemed to get lost in the news cycles. So, just a reminder, she was literally a Russian agent who was purposefully sent here to infiltrate the NRA. (And yeah, I know she says she tried to…establish back-channel communications between the US and Russia of her own volition but uh, I don’t believe her just like I don’t believe those two Russian guys just happened to be in Salisbury to look at the “123m tallest spire in southern England” when one of Putin’s enemies was poisoned in that same town at the same time.) (Russian officials should also maybe stop standing by windows because they sure do fall out of them a lot.)

The NRA should be disbanded. They should have to take their “““““membership fees”””” and pay restitution to the families who have and continue to suffer due to the NRA’s bloodthirsty bullshit argument that any-gun-control-is-against-the-woefully-misinterpreted-second amendment (which we only started reading the way we currently read it because of efforts to suppress the Black Panthers rights to open carry.)

The NRA is a terrorist organization holding this country hostage.

Every politician voting against gun control legislation should be named in every wrongful death lawsuit filed by bereaved parents.

Guns are uniquely effective killing machines. Our populace having unfettered access to weapons of war is not uh, good. We also have more data them ever about the marketing campaigns run by gun manufacturers through the discovery period during the Sandy Hook lawsuit in which the parents suck Alex Jones for malicious slander.

Not only did they lose their child to senseless violence they have been victims of an ongoing harassment campaign that constantly retraumatizes them and never allows them a moment’s peace to grieve their child who was shot while attending elementary school. I know we all understand the horrors but they need to be reiterated because I cannot idly live in a country that allows these horrors to continue.

It’s good Alex Jones lost that lawsuit. It’s shameful those families had to sue at all.

Look, the second amendment is about well-regulated militias. It’s a false argument, anyone claiming what “the founders would have wanted” is talking out their ass, the founders had access to muskets and couldn’t fathom an AK-47, we used to have an assault weapons ban whose expiration marks the steep rise in gun violence. It’s a total strawman. But also, the Constitution of this country is a living document and we’ve only recently started treating it as untouchable because of a few Supreme Court justices who decided the best interpretation of the Constitution is to write their own fanfic about what they think the dead men meant when they wrote those things.

But we used to…amend it.

The whole point of the Bill Of Rights was to attest that this document was not perfect or complete and would need additional rights added as we, the people of the United States, felt they were important. That’s why the Constitution was unratifiable without them. (Most of our fave rights come from the first 10 amendments we literally one time outlawed alcohol in this country through an amendment aaaahhhhh!!!!)

We haven’t amended the document since May 20, 1992.

It’s been thirty years.

The reverence for an imagined history is literally killing us.

And I think there is an overwhelming majority of people in this country who want to stop living in fear of violence, who don’t want the answer for how best to protect their children to be homeschooling them, who remember that it wasn’t always like this and there is nothing making us continue to live under the tyranny of the NRA except spineless politicians who are literally accepting blood money in order to keep their access to power.

Individualistic solutions to systemic problems are never the answer.

I know third-party candidates are often seen as a joke, as spoilers for the Democrats, and as possible Russian ops. But I don’t think that has to be the case and I think the American people are ready for someone to speak to common sense and use a shared language of healing and we just want someone to acknowledge the pain in a way that feels like they tangibly care about fixing the systems that cause it.

When I was in college in 2012 I got into an argument with a politics teacher who I felt was overly dismissive of grassroots campaigns and what they inspired in voters. I brought up Bernie Sanders's senate run against the local fan-favorite IDX millionaire Rich Tarrant (many of his signs were graffitied to read Rich Tyrant, great job Vermont) and she had mocked the idea in front of the class that it could work on a national scale. And then came 2016, and along with it, an email from that professor who wanted to admit that she was wrong and she thought of our argument every time Bernie was mentioned on the news. (I know Bernie did not win but he did move the conversation forward/left & despite the continued existence of Bernie Bros I still see that as a net positive.)

The mayor of Buffalo won through a write-in campaign.

There are so many women running for office explicitly as gun control advocates through organizations like Moms Demand.

Change is possible.

Once a third-party candidate wins a national election we can then add their party candidates to state and local ballots without having to hit a bullshit percentage clause before each candidate can be listed. I know all the risks of splitting the vote, but I honestly think if the illegitimate twice-impeached Russian-operative former president who is currently indicted for crimes committed while running for office becomes the Republican nominee, we may see a wave of disgruntled conservatives who generally like lower taxes but really don’t want to die in a supermarket willing to cast their vote solely based on the latter.

We, as the American populace, deserve better.

We deserve a political system that works.

Congress has been broken for years but the most recent iterations are worse than they’ve ever been. It’s always been bad, but it truly used to be better. Their jobs are to serve their constituent’s best interests when it comes to safety, housing, and the right to life. (Two of which can be solved with a combination of robust rent control and UBI!)

They are very bad at their jobs and they are very good at convincing us there is no alternative.

There is.

The majority of Americans are pro-gun control & anti-forced birth. Our representatives don’t reflect even a sliver of the populace because of the aforementioned cost of running as a candidate.

I want more custodians, public transportation workers, electricians, carpenters, engineers, novelists, social workers, and teachers in our legislative bodies. People who work with people, like the doctors & nurses who have quit their jobs in order to make change because they couldn’t handle telling people that their loved ones didn’t make it due to damage caused by bullets.

No more former McKinsey analysts okay? I want people with souls and deep roots and authentic care for their communities and fellow humans.

After the shooting in Uvalde last year I wrote a piece I never sent because I don’t like invading people’s inboxes with any sort of bleak no-hope left essays. I struggle with the continuing feeling like there’s no hope for a better, safer, less corrupt future, but I really think that there are more of us than there are of them and we may have reached the boiling point as a nation that will bubble over into real, lasting change.

The Republicans aren’t more popular, they’re just really good at gaming the system to make it appear that way. Remember, the country isn’t 50% Democrats, 50% Republicans. Even in the most split votes, we’re a 30% Republican, 30% Democrat, 40% non-voter country. (This, by the way, has been the case since the Revolutionary War. The majority of the country did not care who the ruling class was, it made little difference to their daily lives, a sentiment we still struggle with today despite increased suffrage.)

Voter mobilization may feel futile, but it’s actually the best chance we’ve got to make change because we’re dealing with a mostly untapped resource. It’s kind of like how they doubled razor sales by convincing women that their body hair was bad. The untapped market awaits babeeeeyyy can’t think of anything more American than that!!

(Even if you don’t want to volunteer to canvass or write postcards, I beg everyone to take a page out of my best friend’s book and simply ask every single person you go on a date with if they vote in the midterms and local races. John Waters says not to fuck people without books and I’d just like to add: don’t fuck people without a sapid sense of civic duty.)

I am sick of being asked to stand by as we sacrifice children to satiate the capitalistic interests of gun manufacturers.

We don’t have to live like this.

There has to be another way.

There just has to be.

Links Mentioned:

Elie Mystal on Brian Lehrer Show Monday April 10 - WNYC

The Gun Show - More Perfect Podcast

The Secret History of Guns - The Atlantic

School Shootings This Year: How Many and Where - EducationWeek

Maria Butina: The Russian gun activist who was jailed in the US - BBC

Salisbury novichok suspects say they were only visiting cathedral - The Guardian

How gun makers bait insecure young men into buying weapons - MSNBC

Sandy Hook families announce $73 million settlement with Remington Arms in landmark agreement - The Washington Post

Russians launched pro-Jill Stein social media blitz to help Trump win election, reports say - NBC News

George Washington was right about ‘baneful’ two-party politics - Boston Globe

Sandy Hook was 10 Years Ago - Substack

The Shocking, Sickening Reality of Child Labor in America - The New Republic