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In the wake of massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, two senators — Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Pat Toomey — partnered on a worthwhile proposal. The bill wouldn’t have addressed every component of the debate over gun violence, but their legislation would’ve required background checks on firearm purchases at gun shows and online.
A majority of the Senate supported the proposal, but it couldn’t overcome a Republican filibuster: Four GOP senators supported the bill, but that wasn’t enough. (A handful of red-state Democrats opposed the measure, but each of them was soon after defeated in their re-election bids.)
Nearly a decade later, Congress’ most conservative Democrat responded to the massacre at a Texas elementary school by again suggesting that reforms should be possible. The New York Times reported:
Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a centrist Democrat who has unsuccessfully tried to win enough support for legislation to strengthen background checks for gun purchasers, lamented the polarization in Congress that stymied his efforts and others. “It makes no sense why we can’t do common sense things to try to prevent some of this from happening,” Mr. Manchin said. “It’s just unbelievable how we got here as a society.”
In comments to reporters, the senator added, in reference to a possible legislative effort, “You all know where I stand; I’ll do anything I can.”
And while the comments were reassuring, the word “anything” came with an asterisk.
The legislative arithmetic has not changed: Thanks to the routinization of Senate filibusters, any proposal to address gun violence would need at least 10 Republican votes in the upper chamber, as was the case in 2013 when the original Manchin-Toomey bill reached the floor.
The problem isn’t that reforms lack majority support in the Senate; the problem is that reforms need supermajority support or they fail.
With this in mind, as part of the same Q&A with Manchin yesterday afternoon, the West Virginian added that he still won’t budge on changing the institution’s filibuster rules, even if it would make it possible to pass legislation that might save lives.
“You would think there’d be enough common sense,” Manchin said. “The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.”
First, the senator is right that one is tempted to think “there’d be enough common sense” among Senate Republicans. But since common sense appears to be in short supply within the GOP conference, it’s up to the governing majority to explore legislative alternatives.
Second, the idea that the status quo on the filibuster is necessary to prevent “total insanity” is wildly at odds with the historical record. For most of American history, if legislation enjoyed majority support in the Senate, it passed. There was nothing insane about it.
And third, those looking for actual examples of “total insanity” should look no further than yesterday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.