In pushing gun-control measures he knows will fail, Chris Murphy tries yet again to destroy the filibuster.
He knows this and is grandstanding to vilify the filibuster, though Democrats have used it themselves hundreds of times in recent years.
N ever one to let a tragedy go to waste, Second Amendment antagonist Senator Chris Murphy proposed that the Senate grant unanimous consent on a House gun-control bill (H.R. 8), citing the recent school shooting in Michigan. “I want to tell you why I’m making this request,” he explained on the Senate floor. “I understand the low likelihood of success, but I hope many of my colleagues took a minute to watch the cellphone video from the school shooting in Michigan.”
The cellphone video of the Michigan shooting is gut-wrenching, but Republicans shouldn’t be guilt-tripped into supporting “universal” background checks that have absolutely nothing to do with school shootings. The shooter at Oxford High School, who killed four students and wounded seven others, obtained his gun from his irresponsible father, who passed a background check. Any person who buys a gun from a gun-show dealer must pass a background check. Straw purchases are illegal. Giving a gun to a criminal is illegal. Giving a gun to someone you know is a danger to himself or others is a crime. Giving a gun to child is illegal.
And the shooter’s parents have been charged (or, perhaps, overcharged) with a slew of crimes.
Yet, during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Murphy asserted that a bill requiring “universal background checks” would have the votes in the Senate if it weren’t for the filibuster. “It’s the rules of the Senate that prevent us from passing it,” he claimed. “We probably have 52, 53, 54 votes in the Senate for this.”
So, in other words, Murphy doesn’t have the votes.
One of the most corrosive aspects of the Left’s cynical campaign to destroy the filibuster has been to normalize the idea that proper governance always relies on simple majorities. But no free nation on earth, and certainly not the United States, does this. We know Murphy is aware of this fact, since he and Democrats participated in over 300 filibusters during the Trump years, and they never once groused about the filibuster’s supposed illiberal nature. And not once in those 300-plus votes, incidentally, did Republicans “have the votes.”
That said, even if the filibuster didn’t exist, Murphy wouldn’t have the votes. The campaign to gut the filibuster is predicated on a false notion that every bill Democrats propose is a democracy-saving necessity. But the problem with this argument is that even if we conceded for the sake of debate that the filibuster should be eliminated, neither H.R. 8 nor the Left’s authoritarian efforts to eliminate state voter-integrity laws would likely “have the votes” to pass.
Back in March, when the House moved forward on duo of gun-control bills, Murphy claimed that “a universal background-checks bill can get 60 votes.” Yet, on the very same day, CNN asked Joe Manchin, who represents a state with one of the nation’s highest firearm ownership levels, whether he would back House Democrats gun-control efforts. “No, I don’t support what the House passed. Not at all,” he answered. That doesn’t sound like the 50th vote, much less the 52nd, 53rd, or 60th.
When asked about the two House bills passed in March, Republican Pat Toomey said he didn’t think “the House had passed anything that could pass the Senate.” Another moderate, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, noted that these bills were “very, very broad.” Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema hasn’t commented specifically on the House bills. Nor, as far as far I can tell, has Democrat Jon Tester, from another state with high levels of gun ownership, come out in support H.R. 8, either.
Gun controllers love to bring up the fact that Manchin and Toomey co-wrote their own 2013 “universal background check” bill. Why wouldn’t they vote for one now? Well, for one thing, Manchin-Toomey created checks on all commercial sales. H.R. 8 institutes FBI background checks on private gun sales, including those that transfer firearms to family members, a policy the West Virginia senator has unambiguously opposed.
H.R. 8 also closes the imaginary “Charleston Loophole” by extending the amount of waiting time for a federal background check from three days to ten. (The three-day limit was explicitly written into the law, so it is the opposite of a loophole. And the Charleston church shooter should have been stopped by a background check, but his narcotics conviction never reached the FBI.) Manchin-Toomey, on the other hand, “reduced the amount of time a seller must wait for a response from the background check system before proceeding with a weapon sale, from three business days to 48 hours.”
In the name of incrementalism, Murphy now says he’s willing to “settle” for less “in order to save lives.” Republicans shouldn’t concede the false premise. But also, Murphy knows he doesn’t have the votes. He knows that support for gun control is cratering. He simply wants to spend a week on the Senate floor accusing Republicans of selling weapons to ISIS or some such idiotic thing. Every time he pulls this stunt, the media give him tons of attention, and yet not one journalist challenges his numerous outrageous and false claims.