'We don’t have to live this way, and we don’t have to die this way'

The Constitution impacts how people live and die, writes Luke Pickrell

In 2018, Donald Trump’s Justice Department used its authority as part of the executive branch to ban the sale of bump stocks, an attachment that increases a gun’s rate of fire. The move came several months after Stephen Paddock fired more than 1,000 rounds at a rate of 90 rounds every ten seconds out of his Las Vegas hotel window in 2017, killing 60 and wounding over 400.

Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court, an institution “Captured and corrupted by money and extremism,” voted 6-3 to overturn the bump stock ban. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the most obviously corrupt Justices, said the DOJ had incorrectly classified semiautomatic rifles equipped with a bump stock as machine guns because they “cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’” In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated: “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” When pedantic definitions are thrown out, a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is a machine gun for all intents and purposes. Responding to the Court’s ruling, Las Vegas shooting survivor Marisa Marano said, “We’re not going to let our children continue to die. You know, that’s my biggest push, is that as an adult, I am stuck with this trauma and this fear for the rest of my life. My children should not have to live this way. You know, we don’t have to live this way, and we don’t have to die this way.”

Last December, following a shooting at UNLV, I wrote an article blaming the Constitution for mass shootings in the U.S. and reflecting on the circular arguments leftists usually fall into when discussing gun legislation. Despite receiving majority support in nationwide polls, gun control legislation consistently dies in the Senate. When gun control legislation does survive the legislative meat grinder, the Supreme Court can intervene as it desires. Instead of debating who wants to take guns away from workers, leftists should seize on the contrast between majority opinion and minority rule to expose our undemocratic state.

Few topics exemplify the Constitution’s minority checks as clearly as guns. As I noted last year, universal background check legislation passed the House in 2013, 2015, 2019, and 2021, but all four bills died in the Senate. The 2013 bill was supported by 55 senators but defeated by a Filibuster, with 45 backers representing just 38 percent of the population. The 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first federal gun control legislation enacted in three decades, was subjected to alterations and backroom deals and stripped of any meaningful content. Paraphrasing Danie Lazare, I wrote in December, “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.”

In a 2020 article, Marisa Marano’s sister, Geena, noted, “Mitch McConnell has blocked the bipartisan, House-passed bill to make [background checks] the law of the land for more than a year.” It’s not too tricky to figure out what’s going on. When one person has the power to stop legislation that would impact millions of people’s lives, something is amiss, especially when millions of people support said legislation.

Initially, a political movement in the U.S. might not speak directly to the need for a democratic constitution in which power is held in a unicameral legislature elected by universal and equal suffrage. People never demand democracy in the abstract. Instead, democracy is demanded in order to realize something else, such as healthcare, job security, the termination of a war, or an end to police brutality. Democracy always has a social content. People want political power to obtain something otherwise kept from them. In the U.S., the desire for power inevitably runs into the Constitution. Legislation surrounding gun control is the perfect example.

While I question Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s interest in fundamentally changing the Supreme Court, she is correct: "People have died and are dying after the Dobbs decision. People have died and can die with the rollbacks of environmental provisions.” Two years since Dobbs and with several important decisions on the way, I predict that frustration with the Supreme Court and the Senate will continue to grow. The goal of the Democratic Constitution Blog is to continue shifting animosity away from individual targets like McConnell or Trump and toward a broader political analysis of our undemocratic Constitution.