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

by Steven Levitsky

There is an even larger gap between public opinion and policy on the issue of gun control. A series of mass school shootings in recent decades—including those in Columbine (1999), Sandy Hook (2012), Parkland (2018), and Uvalde (2022)—generated broad public support for stricter gun laws. According to polling conducted by Morning Consult/Politico in the wake of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, 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.