Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr in an impassioned plea for congressional action said it best, America is being held hostage by 50 Republican Senators and the archaic Senate filibuster rule. He can add two Vichy Democrat appeasers of the enemies of democracy, Sens. “Manchinema”, who also value the Senate filibuster rule over the lives of innocent young children gunned down in their classroom.
NPR reports, NBA coach Steve Kerr calls out 50 senators on a bipartisan gun background check law:
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr made it clear he did not want to talk about basketball before Tuesday night’s playoff game, instead devoting a news conference to discuss the violence at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas — and to condemn politicians’ inaction on a fundamental gun law.
“Any basketball questions don’t matter,” Kerr said. But his remarks on guns drew wide interest, as the U.S. absorbed the news that yet another mass shooting had robbed young schoolchildren of their lives and futures.
“When are we gonna do something?!” Kerr shouted, after running through the list of recent gun violence in the U.S., including the Tops grocery shooting in Buffalo and a church shooting in Southern California.
“I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there,” said Kerr, who grew visibly emotional as he discussed the tragedies inflicted upon innocent people. “I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough.”
Kerr accused a group of 50 senators of defying the will of the American people by not acting on H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act that the House approved more than a year ago.
Kerr, whose father was killed by gunmen in Lebanon in 1984, said that 90% of the U.S. public currently support requiring universal background checks — a claim that has previously been verified by fact-checkers.
“We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington who refuse to even put it to a vote, despite what we the American people want,” the coach said. “They won’t vote on it, because they want to hold on to their own power.”
“It’s pathetic,” Kerr said, as he stood up to end the news conference. “I’ve had enough.”
Those amplifying Kerr’s message included Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, who said Kerr “best expressed the outrage of the nation.”
The Senate received H.R. 8 in March of 2021. There were no further updates to its status until Tuesday, when it received its first reading, according to Congress’ legislation tracker.
Wait for it …
Huffington Post reports, Joe Manchin Says He’d Do ‘Anything’ For Gun Control ― Except Eliminate Filibuster:
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Tuesday he would do “anything I can” to help pass what he called “common sense” legislation to address gun violence in the wake of a horrific shooting in Texas, where at least 19 kids and two teachers died when a gunman opened fire at an elementary school.
“It makes no sense at all why we can’t do common sense things and try to prevent some of this from happening. It’s all just unbelievable how we’ve gotten as a society that someone could be that deranged and this sick,” Manchin lamented.
But when asked if he would support eliminating the filibuster in order to overcome unified Republican opposition to such legislation, Manchin, a staunch filibuster advocate, reiterated that he would not go that far.
Who does this schmuck think he is, Meatloaf? (I would do anything for love / But I won’t do that).
“The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity,” Manchin told reporters, repeating an argument he has made on other issues, including on voting rights. The senator has emphasized the importance of protecting the input of the minority in the Senate.
The filibuster is an anti-democratic rule – it gives a veto power to a tyranny of the minority – in the anti-democratic institution of the Senate in the “world’s oldest democracy.” THAT is total insanity, you idiot.
“You would think there would be enough common sense” in the Senate to pass gun control legislation without nuking the filibuster,” Manchin added.
There doesn’t appear to be, however. Passing legislation with the filibuster on the books requires at least 60 votes to advance in the Senate ― meaning at least 10 Republican senators would need to be on board.
Most GOP lawmakers don’t believe Congress has any role in addressing gun violence.
* * *
Little, if anything, has changed in Congress in the decade since the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, which culminated in similar calls for gun control and then a failed vote in the Senate on expanding gun background checks. The violence seems to only have accelerated in recent years. Last week, in Buffalo, New York, ten people were killed by a gunman at a grocery store.
The very bare minimum gesture the Senate could make following Tuesday’s shooting is to confirm a director to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the nation’s major gun regulator. The agency hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed director since 2015.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing for President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the ATF, Steve Dettelbach, on Wednesday. Republicans are opposed to Dettelbach and are likely to launch attacks against him during the proceedings.
Democrats don’t necessarily need GOP votes to confirm Dettelbach if all 50 of their members vote to push him through, but it’s not clear if they have all 50 of their members on board yet. Manchin, who helped sink Biden’s last nominee to lead the agency, said he still had “some questions” for Dettelbach.
Dettelbach on Tuesday landed the support of the National Sheriff’s Association.
Sinema’s first public comments after getting one of the worst ratios I’ve seen in a while yesterday: https://t.co/7nx7Rvnihi pic.twitter.com/DqWXDmsSlo
— Dillon Rosenblatt (@DillonReedRose) May 25, 2022
“Silent Sinema” finally speaks, but has nothing to say but “bipartisan conversations” blah-blah-blah, which is just code for “do nothing”:
SINEMA just stopped reporters outside the senate chamber and said she had something to say. This is rare.
Here’s what she said. I asked her if she was willing to set aside the filibuster. She said she didn’t believe “that DC solutions are realistic here.” pic.twitter.com/BCUQQzEX0l
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 25, 2022
The only response that we wanted to hear came from Senator Mark Kelly:
Sen Mark Kelly (D-AZ) on gun control legislation:
“Like I said … it’s f*cking nuts not to do anything about this.”
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) May 25, 2022
UPDATE: Rep. Ruben Gallego has heard enough of Sinema’s bullshit.
Please just stop.. unless you are willing to break the filibuster to actually pass sensible gun control measures you might as well just say “thoughts and prayers” https://t.co/YA5Pp3dqao
— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) May 24, 2022
Ron Brownstein explains, “The Real Reason America Doesn’t Have Gun Control”, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/senate-state-bias-filibuster-blocking-gun-control-legislation/638425/
[G]un control is one of many issues in which majority opinion in the nation runs into the brick wall of a Senate rule—the filibuster—that provides a veto over national policy to a minority of the states, most of them small, largely rural, preponderantly white, and dominated by Republicans.
The disproportionate influence of small states has come to shape the competition for national power in America.
[S]enate Republicans have represented a majority of the U.S. population for only two years since 1980, if you assign half of each state’s population to each of its senators. But largely because of its commanding hold on smaller states, the GOP has controlled the Senate majority for 22 of those 42 years.
[In] their opposition to gun control, Republicans in Congress clearly are prioritizing the sentiments of gun owners in their party over any other perspective, even that of other Republican voters. The Pew polling found that significant majorities of Americans support background checks (81 percent), an assault-weapons ban (63 percent), and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines (64 percent); a majority also opposes concealed carry of weapons without a permit. Majorities of Republicans who don’t own guns shared those opinions, as did Democratic gun owners, by even more lopsided margins. Even most Republicans who do own guns said in the polling that they support background checks and oppose permitless concealed carry.
Despite all of this, Republican elected officials, in their near-lockstep opposition to gun control, have bent to groups like the NRA in equating almost any restrictions as a sign of disrespect to the values of red America.
The Senate’s small-state bias is impeding legislative action on other issues on which Americans broadly agree, including climate change, abortion, and immigration. As with gun control, polls consistently show that a majority of Americans support acting on climate change, oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, and back comprehensive immigration reform, including offering legal status to undocumented immigrants (especially young people brought into the country by their parents). The House has passed legislation reflecting each of those perspectives. The Senate’s inaction on these issues again reflects the outsize influence of those states with the highest gun-ownership rates—which also tend to be those enmeshed in the fossil-fuel economy, with high shares of culturally conservative white Christians and low shares of immigrants.
Brownstein concludes:
If there is any hope for congressional action on gun control in the aftermath of the Uvalde tragedy—or another mass shooting in the future—it almost certainly will require reform or elimination of the filibuster. Otherwise, the basic rules of American politics will continue to allow Republicans to impose their priorities even when a clear majority of Americans disagree. The hard truth is that there’s no way to confront America’s accelerating epidemic of gun violence without first addressing its systemic erosion of majority rule.
Oh, so Sinema is ready to “have REAL conversations and try to do something?”
Left to Sinema, any attempt at gun reform legislation will suffer the same fate as Build Back Better did in the Senate, DOA.
We all know that defending the filibuster is cover for the traitors Manchin and Sinema to be the obstructionists they have been paid to be. And they will not bend now because there’s still some gold in them there hills.
So if there’s a conversation from Sinema, expect it to be about bipartisanship or some such nonsense that we can do without.
Back sometime in 2020, I used to wonder if Sinema was really willing to take down Biden and prevent the Democrats from delivering the progressive agenda they promised. I wasn’t sure she would do it. But she did. And her corruption has affected millions of lives in very negative ways for years to come.
A baby massacre is not going to move her. So don’t hope.
But call her offices anyhow.
If Sinema makes any real overtures on gun control the gun lobby/manufacturers will be right there with their checkbooks to shut it down.
She’s a tax deduction for these folks and not a real threat to the GQP agenda.