The New York Times published an op-ed late Friday night by former Democratic Rep. Steve Israel offering advice to the Marchers for Our Lives. Israel, who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee until 2014, is now a commentator on CNN:
My advice to the students? When you finish marching on the mall, march into the specific congressional districts where you can actually make a difference.
The midterm elections are in eight months. A vast majority of congressional districts have been gerrymandered bright blue or ruby red. In those deep-red districts, the only threat that far-right members of Congress face is a primary challenge from someone farther to the right. You may regard voting for universal background checks as a no-brainer, but they see it as a blemish on their N.R.A. rating — an open door to a primary challenge. That explains the unmovable fealty these representatives have to the gun lobby.
But in this election there are more than 40 truly competitive districts, including many where you can make a real difference by helping replace an incumbent who consistently supports the gun lobby with a challenger who won’t. [...]
You can stage marches and school walkouts, but then walk into the swing congressional districts that matter. In the end it’s not about standing up to be heard. It’s about changing who sits in Congress.
Israel is certainly right to urge the young people who showed up for the coast-to-coast marches Saturday not only to vote but also to work for candidates who are challenging the incumbents whose voting histories are a consequence of their being beholden to the National Rifle Association. Right now, Republican obstructionists in the House of Representatives refuse to allow gun legislation to even come up for vote on the floor.
So, getting reasonable gun reforms is only going to happen if members of Congress fear that voters may boot them out of office if they continue to stand in opposition to legislation designed to reduce gun violence. And the only way to instill such fear is to actually boot a few of the foot-draggers. They need to fear voters more than they fear the NRA.
But Israel leaves out an important component of the drive for gun-law reform.
In the past 35 years, most gun legislation has taken place not in Congress, but in the state legislatures. For instance, the NRA began campaigning in 1985 to get every state to freely issue permits for carrying concealed firearms. It has largely succeeded. These days, it has two related campaigns underway.
One is federal—requiring all states to reciprocate other states’ concealed permits. Universal reciprocation. In other words, a person who lives in a state where permits are granted without requiring firearms training would be allowed to carry a concealed firearm in states whose permits cannot be obtained without extra background checks and mandated training.
The second campaign is to eliminate permits altogether. In 1986 only one state, Vermont, did not require a permit for someone carry a concealed gun. Twenty years later, only Alaska had joined Vermont. But since 2010, Vermont and Alaska have been joined by 11 other states. The NRA and its allies continue to work to expand that number.
Those are far from the only laws that state legislatures have loosened. Given the current situation, young people and the rest of us citizens need to focus significant effort on the candidacies of people running for state legislatures. The party that has passed the worst gun laws and blocked passage of even modest restrictions is the GOP. In 25 states, Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the governorship. In five other states, Republicans control both houses of the legislature, and in four others they control one house. Only 16 governorships are held by Democrats.
So, of course, as Israel notes, it’s important to focus on voting Republicans out of the majority in Congress. But it’s also important to work to kick them out of the majority in the state legislatures if the objectives of young people and their allies for gun reform are to be accomplished.
Unlike Congress, in most states it doesn’t take much money to run a successful legislative campaign. A few committed volunteers and a few thousand dollars—sometimes just a few hundred—can make the difference.
Millions of people turned out Saturday across the nation. As 17-year-old Cameron Kasky said to the estimated 800,000 protesters in Washington, D.C., the March for Our Lives isn’t the “climax of this movement — it is the beginning.” If just 10 percent of those millions work to elect people in Congress and in state legislatures who don’t believe in business as usual, violence as usual, kowtowing to the NRA as usual, big changes could be made come November.