The filibuster is one of those things that has been around for ages and has benefitted both parties over the years.
However, now, it’s supposedly archaic and needs to be purged. Never mind that Democrats have used it plenty in the past.
No, none of that matters now. What matters now is whether Democrats can push through their anti-gun agenda and cram it down the throats of millions of Americans.
To that end, it seems a gun control group is kicking off a campaign calling for the end of the filibuster.
A gun control group on Monday launched a digital ad campaign pushing for filibuster reform in the Senate, arguing the procedural tool has cost lives by blocking meaningful legislation to overhaul firearm laws.
Brady, an anti-gun violence group founded by former Reagan aide Jim Brady and his wife Sarah, debuted two new ads first obtained by The Hill as part of its “#FilibusterIsKillingUs” campaign that calls on the Senate to eliminate the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation to pass.
The organization plans to spend $40,000 on its initial round of digital ads, with more outreach likely moving forward.
“In the past four Congresses, the filibuster has stopped life-saving and common-sense legislation such as expanded and strengthened background checks from passing the Senate, creating a chilling effect on such legislation even as these policies attract overwhelming support from the American public, including majorities of both parties,” the organization said in a statement.
In other words, the filibuster has kept groups like Brady and their footsoldiers in the Senate from completely obliterating the Second Amendment and what it stands for.
The thing is, removing the filibuster is incredibly shortsighted, even for Brady.
Remember that political opinions aren’t on a fixed trajectory. What’s increasing in popularity today may drop in popularity tomorrow. The American people can be fickle that way. That’s especially true when it comes to policy.
So what would Brady do if a bill made it through the House repealing the National Firearms Act of 1934 or the Gun Control Act of 1968? What if background checks were looking to be repealed?
Now, you or I would celebrate in the streets if this were even a possibility, but let’s not let the MCU and Disney+ be the only ones to play “What If…?”
With that in mind, let’s say in this hypothetical that the measure had a fair number of supporters in the Senate. Say, 52 senators were already onboard.
What would Brady and the rest of the anti-Second Amendment crowd do? Why, they’d expect their pet senators to filibuster the hell out of that bill. They’d want them to do anything and everything to keep that bill from being passed and we all know it.
See, the filibuster is a tool. In a way, it’s not unlike a firearm, namely that it serves whoever uses it. It has no volition of its own. It can serve hero and villain alike.
The difference is that with a gun, we tend to agree on who the villains using them are. In politics, that’s a bit murkier.
Either way, though, they’d use the filibuster in a heartbeat. Their issue isn’t that the filibuster exists. No, their issue is that it’s preventing them from doing what they want.
They forget that our Founding Fathers were distrustful of government. They didn’t want it to be particularly easy to create laws because laws can be used to enslave the citizenry. The filibuster is the kind of tool that helps keep those kinds of laws from coming to fruition.
But, like so many others, Brady wants it to go away so they can have their way like a petulant child. Typical of the gun control crowd, to be fair.
