Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

by Steven Levitsky

65 percent of Americans support stricter gun control laws, while only 29 percent oppose them. Broad public support also emerged for specific gun safety policies. Surveys by Gallup and Pew have consistently found more than 60 percent support for a law banning the manufacture, sale, or possession of semiautomatic or “assault” weapons and more than 80 percent support for laws requiring universal background checks for gun purchases. But such legislation has consistently failed in the U.S. Senate. This is, in part, because the Senate vastly overrepresents gun owners: the twenty states with the highest rates of gun ownership contain barely a third as many people as the twenty states with the lowest rates of gun ownership. But these states are all equally represented in the Senate. Together with the filibuster, this overrepresentation has made the Senate the graveyard of gun control legislation. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, parents of the victims lobbied for legislation to establish universal background checks for gun purchases. They were successful in the House, which passed a universal background check bill in 2013. The bill gained the support of fifty-five senators. But that, of course, wasn’t enough, and it died at the hands of a filibuster. The forty-five senators who opposed the bill represented 38 percent of Americans. The House passed similar universal background check legislation in 2015, 2019, and 2021, but all three bills were killed in the Senate. And ...