Sen. John Cornyn of Texas was a key figure behind the bipartisan gun control effort passed last year in the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX. In fact, there’s little chance the bill would have passed without him.
Never mind that the bill would have done nothing to prevent that or any other mass shooting, it was still gun control and gun control advocates were thrilled. They wanted more, but they were happy to get anything.
Now, many are calling for more gun control in the wake of two mass shootings in California. Cornyn, however, is warning them not to get their hopes up.
Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn says he doesn’t expect to see any new gun legislation despite the recent spate of mass shootings in California.
“I think we did everything we could do with the votes available last summer, so I don’t see that happening anytime soon,” Cornyn told NBC News.
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“I’d be surprised if the House would be willing to take something up,” Cornyn said on Thursday.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also said he didn’t expect to see any new legislation.
Now, nothing about this should surprise anyone. Republicans generally tend not to favor gun control, though there are just enough exceptions that you can’t bank on them being pro-gun. However, there aren’t generally enough such exceptions to sway the majority in any meaningful way.
And really, why should Republicans pass some kind of gun control bill anyway?
California has tons of gun control laws already on the books. As we’ve pointed out pretty much all week, those bills managed to do two things: Jack and squat.
Look, what happened was awful and no one is going to argue otherwise. Further, there likely are steps Congress could take that would address mass shootings.
The issue is that we’re not likely to see any of them happen.
Republicans aren’t going to pass gun control, which is fine since it’s clearly not the answer. Democrats, though, won’t pass anything else.
Remember the kvetching from them when Republicans started talking about hardening schools after Parkland? School security just made an awful lot of sense. An assault weapon ban, which most anti-gunners were pushing, wouldn’t make the issue of school shootings disappear. After all, the worst school we’ve seen in the modern era was Virginia Tech, where the killer used handguns, not an AR-15.
So school security would have done something to undermine all school shootings, and yet Democrats soundly rejected the idea.
Why would it be any different this time around?
So Cornyn is right to say there’s no political will for another round of gun control, especially since that won’t address the issue. What Cornyn isn’t saying is that there’s no political will from the other side to take any meaningful steps that might actually do some good.
This is where we are in American politics today, and it’s why we can’t actually do anything about mass shootings.
And it’s a shame because good people die and the jackwagons responsible continue to pretend they’re the only ones interested in solving the problem.