Republicans are the Worst Thing to Happen to Children Since Polio

from YOUTH: FEM Spring 2023

To All the Ships I've Loved Before

By Noor Hasan

Onone quiet morning, in a political science class just barely fi lling two complete rows, I sat alongside a burnt-out group studying a dense workload when suddenly the entire class jolted, and our typically agile professor dropped his pen.

A loud and sharp bang came from the outside of the hallway and we froze. A few seconds passed, and the professor and I nervously held eye contact after a quarter of only polite small talk and friendly exchanges. He resumed the lesson. Until, again. Another loud slamming noise escaped the halls and seeped into the cracks of our classroom door. We all sat quiet, still, the professor visibly in distress, the students not so much as blinking.

The banging noise came from the doors outside the class shutting, doors made with aluminum closers intended to soften their slam. On that particular quiet morning, they had failed to do their softening job, and at that moment, we were not thinking about aluminum closers. Our worst imaginations ran free. In reality, there was no gunman skulking down the hall and there was no need for a desperate internal prayer monologue (God if you’re there I promise...). We were just a classroom full of tired and scared students.

I try to understand this collective fear as being a legacy of children and adults who endured a world of “Sandy Hook,” “Uvalde,” “Parkland,” and watched absolutely no gun-control policy come of it. Surely my 11 year-old self thought after my 2012 post-Sandy Hook gun drill that the trusty members of Congress would get together and protect me. That they would protect my friends and my teachers, and never fail again in the way the government failed the children and teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary just a few days before the school’s Christmas break.

But on the issue of guns, the members of the United States Congress and government are failures. A failure today, a failure yesterday, and a failure every single day legislation falls short of protecting against the brutality of guns.This is best attributed to the legislative powers of the fi libuster. Powers that continue to be weaponized by the Senate’s Republican leadership and powers that continue to murder children. To understand why and how the fi libuster has been such an integral roadblock to passing any substantive means of gun control, it is important to analyze its history. The fi libuster’s key purpose is to allow for unlimited debate in order to delay a bill getting voted on. To end the period of debate over a bill, which would effectively end the momentary fi libuster, the Senate must reach a cloture vote, which takes 60 Senators (a 3/5 majority). With today’s Senate split almost evenly (Democrats nowhere near 60), it is clear why any meaningful gun control bill or assault weapons ban has not been achieved. The actual House of Representatives website itself calls the fi libuster’s process of blocking a bill, “talking it to death.”

The system of the fi libuster works collectively with the countless members of the Senate (House too but the Senate is really the key player) who receive campaign funding from the National Rifl e Association (NRA) to prevent gun control. As the central force behind the gun lobby, the NRA spends millions of dollars annually to support the campaigns of Republican Senators who further the Association’s “Second Amendment” agendas. The list of Senators on the NRA’s payroll is disturbingly long. With over a million dollars towards his campaign, notorious Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell leads the party’s efforts to uphold the violent agendas of the NRA and organizations who fund Republican campaigns.This is the same person who, in 2010, promised Wall Street he would block bills that would hold them accountable for causing the Great Recession so long as they agreed to fund Republican campaigns. The Senate leadership guides the party, and if consolidating power in Congress means clutching the fi libuster and taking NRA blood money, then they will do just that.

The leverage of this money emboldens the gun lobby to act as the puppeteer of Republican leadership, like McConnell, and severely impede any substantial means of change in doing so. Worth noting are the exceptions to what is (largely) an issue that falls along party lines. Henry Cuellar and Ron Kind (how kind are you Ron?) are two House Democrats that voted against the June 2022 bipartisan gun control bill. Unsurprisingly, both Cuellar and Kind have received gun lobby funding. Kind was endorsed by the NRA during his run for offi ce, and Cuellar not only received NRA funding, but an “A” rating from them as well. The Democratic Party’s traditional clutch towards status-quo politics continues to be an intrinsic fault hindering their minimal gains on gun control. If Democrats continue to use gun-control for their own campaign strategies then they must consistently demand change, become irritating in doing so, and not wait to capitalize upon word of a mass shooting to keep pushing forth legislative proposals. With the unwavering stagnation across party lines and powerful gun lobby, it is no wonder that effective gun control legislation has been insatiable to the general public.

Despite the majority of Americans who support an automatic weapons ban, increased regulations, and universal background checks, congressional Republicans (and the few Democrats) choose stagnation – an autocratic choice. Their power has been so effective that there is almost a collective desensitization to news of shootings. There are more mass shootings than days of the year and guns are now the leading cause of death among children.These are all statistics and facts you know, you understand, and you grow numb to hearing. The fear of mass shootings has become a dystopian nightmare that neatly tucks itself into the minds of Americans. A human-made creation has become so unfettered and accessible, that it has single-handedly traumatized generations of youth even at the sound of a door shutting.

This unnatural aberration in the U.S. – that is, guns becoming the leading cause of death amongst children – is ironically defended by the same party that promotes the “sanctity” of human life. The Republican party has effectively turned a “pro-life” stance into a central tenet of their ideology. The pro-life party sending only “thoughts and prayers” to the families of murdered school children instead of producing policies to prevent the tragedies from happening in the fi rst place is a paradoxical testament to the utter failure of American politics. After Uvalde, the actual Pope, Pope Francis, called for gun control and limiting access to brutal assault weapons. The Evangelical core of the GOP does not bat an eye however, because unlike the NRA, Pope Francis (who they deem as a direct line to God) is not cutting seven-fi gure checks to Mitch McConnell.

When tragedy has struck society, and especially when it targets the youngest and most vulnerable, the (modern) U.S. government has historically sought to eradicate the issue and preserve our youth. The Polio outbreak, for example, became one of the leading causes of death for children in the 1950s. When 60,000 children fell sick in the year 1952 alone, the U.S. government successfully implemented a series of vaccinations and strategies to combat the crisis. In 2023, however, where guns are the leading cause of children’s deaths, and AR-15s are massacring classrooms fi lled with 8-year-olds, Republicans instead pose with guns on their Christmas cards. The dystopian reality of guns is watching logic and reason vanish from the GOP’s minds and instead replaced with a thirst for power – and most importantly, maintaining that power. I want to argue however, that there is hope, and a stopping power. Corruption is no new phenomenon, and combating the autocratic leadership of the Republican party is feasible.

Consider Congress in 1964, when debate broke out for nearly 14 hours. Even when factions of both the Democratic and Republican Party joined in the fi libuster’s polarizing strength to kill the Civil Rights Bill, they failed. The vote for cloture was achieved and The Civil Rights Act passed, surviving the fate of being talked to death. After all, the fi libuster is merely a Senate rule, a rule that can be removed or evolved. In 1994 under President Bill Clinton, Congress passed groundbreaking legislation, and saw the most effective Assault Weapons Ban come to fruition. Today, grassroots pro-gun-control organizations like Brady, Everytown, Sandy Hook Promise, and Moms Demand Action only grow in their ferocity, their mobility, and most importantly, their funding and support. Finally, states are slowly becoming the wiser to pro- viding gun manufacturers legal immunity through The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. In fact in 2019, the Supreme Court – under a Conservative majority – protected a lawsuit against Remington Arms Company. The plaintiffs of the case: families of Sandy Hook victims.

Discussing gun control is not a subject that should come with sugar-coating, dull promises, or meaningless thoughts and prayers from people who ironically ignore the wishes of the Pope. What is important and full of concrete, hopeful promise is the fi ghting political force that grows more angry as much as they grow weary of hearing news of mass shootings. If the failed Republican leadership continues to lay in bed with the NRA and hide behind the fi libuster, it is with the earnest hope that grassroots organizations, polls, and classrooms full of traumatized children will see to their political demise.