After our two most recent massacres, a group of senators is discussing federal gun control legislation. There’s no reason to think they’ll come up with anything that enough Republican senators will support (it’s not even clear that the Senate’s most conservative Democrat — from rural West Virginia — will support something that upsets the gun cult). 

So consider the final paragraphs of today’s New York Times editorial:

In Washington, D.C., there is talk that Republican and Democratic lawmakers might make a deal on some type of national red flag law, which would allow the police to take guns away from people judged to be an imminent danger to themselves or others.

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, has been leading a bipartisan group of senators that is considering establishing a more comprehensive federal background check system, a reform supported by 88 percent of Americans.

We have seen these bipartisan efforts on gun safety measures come and go without results. Still, in the face of Republican intransigence, Democrats — Mr. Biden, in particular — should do whatever they can. Senator Murphy, who has led the charge for tougher gun regulations since Sandy Hook, put it well on the floor of the Senate this past week:

“What are we doing?” he asked his colleagues. “Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority” he wondered, if the answer is to do nothing “as the slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives?”

It’s a question that speaks to the Senate directly and the entire system of American government more broadly. Yes, the country’s democratic system represents the diversity of views in this country on guns. But as currently structured, Congress is fundamentally unresponsive to the needs of its most vulnerable citizens and has been corrupted by powerful interest groups, allowing those groups to block even modest changes that the vast majority of Americans support.

We Americans all share this vast country and need to figure out how to make it better and keep one another alive and thriving. Right now, we’re failing at that primary responsibility. There are glimmers of hope, especially at the state level, that things are changing. But even there, progress is agonizingly slow and won’t be enough for the hundreds of Americans who will be shot today and tomorrow and every day until action is taken.

Unquote. 

The Times editorial board says “we Americans” are failing. Earlier in the editorial, they say the United States is failing. In other editorials, they’ve said Congress is failing. They only once suggest that it’s Republican politicians who are resisting gun control legislation (“in the face of Republican intransigence”), and that their resistance is causing “we Americans”, the United States and Congress to fail.

The Times doesn’t suggest it, but there’s one way to address “our” failure. There are already so many guns in circulation that the problem might never be sufficiently addressed, but there’s a sure-fire way to make a dent in it:

1. Elect Democratic presidents.
2. Elect a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
3. Elect a Democratic majority in the Senate, a majority that includes enough senators willing to abolish or reform the Senate filibuster (the Senate’s absurd rule that permits 41 senators to stop the other 59 from passing most legislation).
4. After taking care of the filibuster, the Democratic president and Democratic Congress will be able to do lots of things, including gun control legislation.
5. Among all those things will be adding four qualified justices to the Supreme Court, the number of justices needed to restore sanity there.

If that sounds too complicated, there’s a simpler solution:

1. Nobody ever votes for a Republican again.