You know your country is in a bad way when you’ve developed a sort of hierarchy of the awfulness of mass shootings, depending on the location and the number and identity of the victims. It’s safe to say the worst of all happen in an elementary school. The Sandy Hook massacre was a special kind of horror that transfixed the nation for days, and now so is Uvalde, Texas, where a lone gunman butchered 19 children and two adults in a local school on Tuesday.
In response, some senators proposed a vote on a background check bill that has passed the House several times, most recently last March. The swing Democratic votes in the Senate leaped into action to clarify that nothing of the sort would be done. Reached by reporters at the Capitol asking if he would support ending the Senate filibuster to clear the way for the bill, Joe Manchin refused, insisting, “The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.” Kyrsten Sinema concurred, telling reporters that she doesn’t think “D.C. solutions are realistic here.”
The Senate leadership barely even pretended to try to force their hands by scheduling a vote. Instead, senators are reportedly going on their Memorial Day recess. It’s a broken, worthless institution.
Meanwhile Senator Chris Coons would like you to know that “we” have to do more, but by “we” he does not mean the US Senate.
Senator Chris Coons
@ChrisCoons
We have to do more. We have to make it harder for individuals to get access to weapons who have demonstrated the capacity, or the potential, to use them to harm themselves or their families. And we have to do more to address gun violence. We cannot become numb to this.