Credit senators for trying on gun laws

As of this writing, talks in the Senate are said to be ongoing, but liable to fall apart at any moment.

Our senators are trying. Whether they succeed appears to be far beyond their control.

Connecticut was the scene of the worst elementary school shooting in U.S. history almost 10 years ago, and in response the state passed some of the tightest gun laws in America. State laws, however, only go so far, and since anyone can cross a state line at any time, there’s only so much protection they can offer.

Now, in response to a terrifyingly similar repeat of the Sandy Hook killings in Uvalde, Texas, last month, Connecticut’s U.S. senators, Democrats Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, are trying to push their legislative peers to act on tougher gun restrictions for the nation as a whole. There’s no chance of repeating Connecticut’s gun law upgrades on a wider scale, but our representatives are trying to get the best package they can.

Still, hopes are modest. “I’m certainly prepared for failure,” Murphy said.

This is not about giving up preemptively. This is about understanding how difficult it is to achieve major change in an institution like the U.S. Senate, which is designed at every turn to make progress slow to the point of being impossible.

Democrats are nominally in control of the Senate, but thanks to filibuster rules the Senate itself invented, 60 votes are needed to proceed on any substantive legislation. That means getting at least 10 Republicans on board for reforms while also keeping all 50 Democrats in favor. It’s no easy task.

The Senate could change its filibuster rules and allow new laws to pass with only 50 votes, but not all Democrats are in support of such a change, so it isn’t going to happen. Despite polls showing large majorities of Americans in favor of, for instance, universal background checks to purchase a firearm, our political system is uniquely unresponsive to such demands.

And so the stasis continues.

Given the circumstances, it’s worth asking whether a narrowly targeted bill — the only kind with any hope of passing the Senate — would be better or worse than nothing at all. For instance, there’s reportedly no chance of raising the age limit to buy semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21, even though had such a rule been in effect the Uvalde killings would not have happened.

The danger would be a Senate that passes a toothless bill and then acts as though there’s nothing left to be done. A bill that does nothing could be more dangerous than no bill.

What shouldn’t stand is the status quo. As of this writing, talks in the Senate are said to be ongoing, but liable to fall apart at any moment. Even in the face of yet another school atrocity, our nation’s elected officials are failing.

At least our senators are trying.

There are Republicans who have expressed interest in changing gun laws, but not enough of them appear to serve in the Senate. If something were to survive the Senate gauntlet, it would be nowhere near on the scale of Connecticut’s post-Sandy Hook reforms.

All of which makes yet another repeat of the tragedy that much more likely.