I have started to write this post several times (I have two versions in draft). But as I was writing and researching, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve become convinced that the central issue is not America’s gun culture (as much as that culture is an outlier on the world sage compared to those of other wealthy nations). Rather, it is America’s anti-democratic political system which is central to the legal framework for gun regulation. Recent polling by NPR/PBS/Marist found that by a margin of 59% to 35%, Americans, as a whole, felt that it was more important to control gun violence than to protect gun rights. Although the question the poll asked is inelegant and somewhat wide of the mark, the results are clear

In the face of these data, it is clear that it is not America’s gun culture that is responsible for the lack of progress in gun control in America. Majorities among blacks and whites, men and women, college educated and not, people from all regions of the country, people from all generations, both those with incomes above $50,000 and those with incomes below $50,000 all are more concerned with gun violence than gun rights. In fact, only 3 groups took the opposite position –gun owners, Trump voters (and Republicans as a whole), and those living in rural areas.

After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after the Pulse Nightclub, after Marjorie Stoneham Douglas, the political power of the “gun lobby” thwarted attempts to control guns.  I remember watching President Obama cry in 2016 as he asked the question “Why?” after the mass shootings at Blacksburg, Columbine and Newtown. The answer to Obama’s plaintive question is not America’s gun culture, it is America’s undemocratic political system.

For many years American students have been served a large portion of codswallop in their history and government classes. They have been told that the United States is a democracy, even though the basic institutions created in the Constitution are largely anti-democratic.

Americans revolted because the British Government was seen to violate its own constitution.  The Declaration of Independence lists twenty-seven grievances including:

• “He (King George III) has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly;” “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice;”
• “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures;”
• “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power;”
• “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent;” and
• “For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.”

All of these offenses were seen as a trampling on the rights of the colonists as Englishmen.

The Founding Fathers wanted a system of government just like the one they were leaving, only without the King, and one that respected its own constitution. The British constitutional monarchy was not a democracy, but an oligarchy. According to the UK National Archives, the electorate in England and Wales consisted of 214,000 men, less than 3% of the total population.  In Scotland, the electorate was even narrower. The franchise was equally limited in America before the Jacksonian Revolution.  In 1824, the number of Americans who voted for President was 3.6% of the population.

The House of Commons 1793-94 by Carl Anton Hickel. (National Portrait Gallery, London)

The ruling oligarchs in colonial America wanted limited representative government, based on Locke’s ideas of natural rights and Montesquieu’s idea of a “a balance of power.” The core of the U.S. constitution is the Bill of Rights, which protects American freedoms from the overreach of their government. The Constitution had many anti-democratic elements baked into it: the Electoral College, the Senate in which representation was by state rather than by population, and the indirect manner in which Senators were chosen.

The representative government designed by the Constitution was to be a government of the elite by the elite and for the elite. Four score and seven years later as the franchise expanded, Lincoln could famously say, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people…” But it wasn’t until 1870 that the 15^th Amendment extended the franchise to all people regardless of race or color; it wasn’t until 1920 that the 19^th Amendment extended the franchise to women; and it wasn’t until 1971 that the 26^th Amendment defined the voting age as 18, so Lincoln’s memorable phrase was premature, at least.

As important as the limited franchise was the retention of a federal system that systematically disadvantaged those from more populous states and a legislative system that, through the filibuster and other Senate rules was designed to give a minority the ability to thwart the majority. The next post will discuss how far America falls short of the ideals of democracy, and how that affected the legal framework for gun regulation.