The Senate Kills on Both Sides of the Border
Our weak firearm regulations have a devastating effect in Mexico. By Luke Pickrell
Last year, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that the U.S. Supreme Court was “captured and corrupted by money and extremism” and “a threat not just to the American way of life and American democracy, but… to our lives.” The same criticism can be leveled against the Senate, whose existence pours cold water on Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that the U.S. is a democracy based on universal and equal voting rights.
No words are too harsh when describing one of the most undemocratic legislatures in the world and perhaps the most infernal of all the Constitution’s creations. “We can't raise our wages. We can't get health insurance. No aid to the cities,” longtime labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan noted in the mid-nineties. “And why? The Senate votes it down. By a weighted vote, for small-state whites in pickup trucks with gun racks, all out there shooting these things down. We have a Louisiana Purchase of Rotten Boroughs, full of Senators who are horse doctors, or in rifle clubs, targeting our bills.”
The facts about the Senate are notorious. Each state gets two representatives regardless of population, meaning people living in Wyoming (population 577,000) have nearly seventy times the influence as people in California (population 39.5 million) — a mockery of the principle of one person, one equal vote. In the case of the filibuster, forty senators from states representing just nine percent of the population can block a bill, while Senators from states representing sixteen percent of the U.S. population are enough to enact a bill (assuming no filibuster). And thanks to Article V of the Constitution, the Senate’s malapportioned representation system cannot be changed.
By 2040, a staggering seventy percent of the U.S. population — including about eighty percent of all racial minorities — will be represented by only thirty senators. When the House passed a bill to combat gerrymandering, the Senate voted it down, even though it had easily passed the House and polled favorably nationwide. When the House passed a bill to eliminate the Electoral College, the Senate voted it down, again despite widespread popularity. Police reform? Dead. Healthcare? Nope. Labor Reform and progressive environmental laws? No chance.
Then there are guns. The 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. 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 fifty-five senators but defeated by a filibuster of forty-five senators from states representing just thirty-eight percent of the entire U.S. 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. Within their larger critique of the Constitution, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt reasonably conclude that the Senate is the “graveyard of gun control legislation.”
But guns aren’t just a domestic matter. The U.S.'s weak gun control legislation has a devastating impact south of the Border. As chronicled by activists like John Lindsay-Poland, every year, thousands of guns purchased legally in the North are smuggled into Mexico. These weapons fuel cartel violence, exacerbate crime, and lead to countless deaths.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, between seventy and ninety percent of guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico can be traced back to the U.S. Mexico has only one gun store. Shops along the southern border — in states like Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico — serve as key sources for weapons, where so-called ‘straw purchasers’ — people who buy guns legally only to resell them later — make a living. Background checks are not required for private sales in many states, gun show loopholes provide easy access, and the Senate has ensured that no federal law specifically targets firearm trafficking. Cartels can easily acquire weapons through proxy buyers, corrupt gun dealers, and online marketplaces.
The Mexican government has repeatedly called on the U.S. to do more to curb illegal gun exports. In March, the unelected and compromised Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, a case filed by the Mexican government accusing seven American gunmakers of knowingly aiding and abetting illegal firearm sales to gun traffickers. The Supreme Court’s decision is still pending.
Yet, overlooked in discussions about guns and violence in Mexico is the role of the U.S. Senate — the place where firearms legislation goes to die. And, behind the Senate, sits the Constitution. The political rules are written to empower a minority of the population over the majority — in this case, a minority of gun owners and ultra-wealthy interest groups like the National Rifle Association. Every day, people in the U.S., Mexico, and beyond die as a result of America’s undemocratic political system.
Martin Luther King, Jr. identified the U.S. as the world’s greatest purveyor of violence, and today’s unchecked flow of guns into Mexico is just one example of that brutality. Abolishing the Senate and establishing a democratic republic based on universal and equal rights in the U.S. is a matter of urgency for people living on both sides of the border.