The peril of squelching a majority

Beyond the lives tragically lost, the refusal of America to contend with gun violence puts democracy itself at risk.

By big margins, Americans favor gun regulation, yet it doesn’t have a chance in Washington.(Photo by Will Porada on Unsplash)

Everybody wants the government to do something to stop the mass shootings. There’s almost no chance that it will. You’ve got to wonder how a democratic government got to this spot of being so unresponsive to what its citizens want.

Pundits and political scientists offer some explanations. They point to the fact that less populous states, which these days lean to the right, get the same two Senate seats as big states, giving extra clout to conservatives; they cite the Senate filibuster rule, which grants inordinate power to the minority, and, of course, an increasingly partisan divide, reinforced by some overtly biased media outlets, that makes politicians reluctant to help the other side get anything it wants.

But then an even bigger question follows: What kind of future does a democracy have if its citizens conclude that their hopes, again and again, are met with…