Blame the Constitution for Mass Shootings

By Luke Pickrell

For the past ten years, The Onion has published the same headline after each mass shooting: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”¹ The country in question is, of course, the United States, where 632 mass shootings (defined as four or more victims shot or killed) have occurred in 2023.² After Stephen Paddock killed 60 people in Las Vegas in 2017, the New York Times wrote, “With each use, [the Onion’s headline] seemed to turn from cheeky political commentary on gun control into a reverberation of despair.”³ In an article titled, 'The Onion' keeps publishing the same mass shooting story, because we're all stuck,’ Mashable said that the satirical outlet perfectly captured Americans’ feelings of “frustration and powerlessness” in the face of gun violence.⁴ “[W]e keep dealing with the same story, this same conversation every single time it happens, and it just continues to happen,” said Lebron James, one of several celebrities to talk about guns: “The ability to get a gun, the ability to do these things over and over and over, and there's been no change is literally ridiculous.”⁵ 

Some people create non-profits in an attempt to stop gun violence. Others turn to moral appeals or seek a cure in gadgets like bulletproof backpacks and whiteboard safe rooms. But most pleas end up at the doors of Congress, the branch of Government empowered to begin the long and arduous process of lawmaking. “Once again I ask Congress to send me a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” pleaded Joe Biden after nine people were killed at a mall in Allen, Texas: “Enacting universal background checks. Requiring safe storage. Ending immunity for gun manufacturers. I will sign it immediately. We need nothing less to keep our streets safe.”⁶ The President said something similar after 18 people were killed in Lewiston, Maine: “Today, in the wake of yet another tragedy, I urge Republican lawmakers in Congress to fulfill their duty to protect the American people. Work with us to pass a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to enact universal background checks, to require safe storage of guns, and end immunity from liability for gun manufacturers. This is the very least we owe every American who will now bear the scars — physical and mental — of this latest attack.”⁷ America is the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation. Still, we can’t stop an 18-year-old from buying an assault rifle, plus 375 rounds of ammunition, and shooting up an elementary school.⁸ The headlines are correct: when it comes to so many issues, including gun violence, Americans are stuck and powerless. 

In 2023, a record number of people wanted the federal government to do something - anything - about guns.⁹ Why is gun reform such a struggle? The immediate culprit is the Senate, the “graveyard of gun control legislation.”¹⁰ Universal background check legislation passed the House in 2013, 2015, 2019, and 2021,¹¹ but all four bills died in the Senate. Bills that do make it through the legislative meat grinder, like the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (the first federal gun control legislation enacted in three decades) are subjected to alternations and backroom deals normalized in the bicameral system. 

Bills have been voted down despite receiving majority support in nationwide polls and the Senate. The 2013 bill, trimmed down to pass through the House after the Sandy Hook shooting, was supported by 55 senators. However, the majority wasn’t enough to overcome a procedural filibuster¹² that enabled 45 senators representing 38 percent of the population to kill the bill. The Senate gives equal representation to unequal states. California, for example, gets as many Senators as Wyoming, though the former has nearly 68 times more residents than the latter. This malapportionment (which is only getting more egregious) results in the overrepresentation of white Americans over non-white Americans and gun owners over non-gun owners. As Levitsky and Greenblat explain, “[T]he twenty states with the highest rates of gun ownership contain barely a third as many people as the twenty states with the lowest rates of gun ownership. But these states are all equally represented in the Senate.”¹³ The result, as they say, is a tyranny of the minority. 

If the Senate is the Wizard, then the Constitution is the man behind the curtain. The Framers’ creation is riddled with minoritarian checks, including a bicameral legislature structure, a malapportioned Senate that allows for a legislative minority veto (the filibuster), a presidential veto, and unelected federal judges and Supreme Court Justices. An all-but-impossible amending clause is the cherry on top. The Constitution creates a complex and convoluted government that drags out the lawmaking process, and forces bills into dark and dank alleys, thereby exposing everyone and everything involved to the power of capital (in its money form). “The more complicated the structure,” explains Lazare, “the greater the number of places for power brokers, influence peddlers, and the like can hide. When legislation must follow a long and tortuous route to passage, then every twist and turn, fork or ford, is an opportunity for some subcommittee chairman or under-assistant minority whip to exact tribute in the form of a payoff or campaign contribution. Every conference committee is a business opportunity for some legislators to see that certain desired changes are made in exchange for a favor or political deal. While spending limits and other financial controls may have their place, they are useless unless an effort is made to straighten out the twists and turns in the legislative route itself.”¹⁴ In other words, we can thank the Constitution for the National Rifle Association’s ability to influence decisions around gun control.

When discussing guns and mass shootings, discourse on the left usually moves between restricting or upholding the right to bear arms. In the background of these discussions is the vision of a future conflict in which a working-class victory depends on access to weapons. Should we defend guns today in the name of a revolution in the future? Or, should we support various restrictions with the hope that doing so will result in fewer deaths? Both positions have permutations, but the core difference is stable: should you, or should you not, support laws that would make it harder for people to get a gun? Lost in the debate is that it doesn’t matter what we want because, at the end of the day, we don’t live in a democracy. We need to chart a new course in the conversation around guns — one that puts the Constitution front and center. Mass shootings are one of the many problems in America, and to even attempt to solve the issue, we need what the Constitution denies us: the unimpeded power to make laws. 

Asked about their famous headline, The Onion’s editor explained that repeating the same message “strengthens the original commentary tenfold each time.”¹⁵ “I’ve seen the headline so many times, I’ve pretty much committed it to memory, and maybe you have, too,” wrote Brian Raftery in Wired.¹⁶ I certainly have; the headline was first to my mind after a friend told me about the recent shooting at UNLV. What if the same reflexive connection was developed between mass shootings and the Constitution? After the Supreme Court gave the 2000 election to George Bush, a defeated Al Gore said that the United States was still the best country in the world and the “hope of mankind.”¹⁷ According to Lazare, what was needed was a “new political framework in which it is impossible for a politician to utter such nonsense without his audience erupting in wave after wave of derisive laughter.”¹⁸ In the future, will similar derision be directed at the Constitution and those who extol its supposed virtues? What will it take for Biden to be met with eye-rolls when he asks Congress to do something about gun violence? Or, to give a more contemporary example, when he talks about defending democracy by holding onto the Constitution’s “guardrails.” The Constitution is killing people. Only democracy can save us. 

1. "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens

2. Alfonseca, Kiara. “More than 40,000 people killed in gun violence so far in 2023.” ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/US/116-people-died-gun-violence-day-us-year/story?id=97382759

3.  Ember, Sydney. "The Onion's Las Vegas Shooting Headline Is Painfully Familiar.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/business/media/the-onion-las-vegas-headline.html

4. Abbruzzese, Jason. "'The Onion' keeps publishing the same mass shooting story, because we're all stuck.” Mashable. https://mashable.com/article/the-onion-keeps-rerunning-same-story-for-mass-shootings

5. Makin, Ken. “ Lebron James’ words on UNLV shooting speak to urgency of the moment.” Andscape. https://andscape.com/features/lebron-james-words-on-unlv-shooting-speak-to-urgency-of-the-moment/

6. “Statement from President Joe Biden on the Shooting in Allen, Texas.” The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/05/07/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-shooting-in-allen-texas/

7. “Statement from President Joe Biden on the Shooting in Lewiston, Maine.” The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/26/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-shooting-in-lewiston-maine/

8. Lazare, Daniel. “Guns, class, and social decay.” Weekly Worker. 

https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1398/guns-class-and-social-decay/

9. Jones, Jeffrey. “Majority in U.S. Continues to Favor Stricter Gun Laws.” Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/513623/majority-continues-favor-stricter-gun-laws.aspx

10. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. New York City: Crown, 2023. p. 186

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid. 

14. Lazare, Daniel. The Velvet Coup. London: Verso, 2001. p. 128

15. "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens

16. Ibid.

17. Lazare. p. 136

18. Ibid.