by Harold Lasswell was one of the icons of political science of the 20th century. Not content to be one of the founding fathers of political psychology and policy sciences, he was one of the earliest to recognize that mass communications was worthy of scholarly study. Long before modern political science devolved into trendy genres like feminist theory, queer theory, and fill in the blank theory, Lasswell was studying propaganda and had invented content analysis to search for patterns within it.
Lasswell wrote over 30 books and somewhere near 250 scholarly journal articles. This is a massive output by any measure. That said, the one book that always caught my attention was an early work entitled, Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How. (#commission earned). This is because I have always had a Lasswellian view of politics at its most basic. It is about the fight by both the elites and the masses to see who gets the spoils along with the countervailing fight by their opponents to keep the spoils for themselves. You can gloss up politics with all sorts of theories but it always comes back to power and the spoils that come with it.
This morning we learned of the infuriating ruling by the Senate Parliamentarian, an appointed and not elected official, that the inclusion of parts of the Hearing Protection Act and the SHORT Act violated the so-called Byrd Rule. This was notwithstanding that the US argued that the National Firearms Act did not violate the Second Amendment because it was a “revenue measure” in US v Miller. The Parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonough, argued the NFA was a regulation and not a tax which is utter bovine manure.
Making matters worse, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) who controls McDonough’s appointment has indicated he does not plan to challenge her ruling.
I see Thune as acting like Kevin Bacon’s character in the movie Animal House. What Thune seems to forget that he would not even be Senate Majority Leader if gun owners had not provided the margin of victory in key Senate races in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Montana.
The question is what to do now as well as what not to do. Gun owners should not do is be like Oliver asking for more. It is time we stop groveling!
The first thing we should be doing is calling our US Senators and letting them have it for kowtowing to the parliamentarian appointed by none other than Harry Reid. Call 202-224-3121 and ask for the offices of your two senators. Keep the pressure up and let them know that merely stripping the NFA reform provisions out of the Big Beautiful Bill is not going to cut it. Here is the list of those up for reelection in 2026. They should be the first targets of your call.
Here are the options as I and others see them:
- Do nothing – definitely possible given the Senate
- Fire Elizabeth McDonough – probably not going to happen
- Have J. D. Vance overrule McDonough as President of the Senate – possible
- Leave the regulatory aspects of the NFA in place and lower the tax to zero or $1 – wimpy but likely
- Rewrite the provisions to try and get past the parliamentarian – maybe
- Set the tax at $1 and preempt all the state’s that ban NFA items – suggested by Kostas Moros
Stephen Gutowski of The Reload thinks that McDonough will neither be fired nor overruled. His argument is that doing so may endanger the sacred tradition of the fillibuster.
While the Majority Leader can fire the parliamentarian or the Vice President can overrule their decisions, there are good reasons that’s happened so rarely. It all has to do with the filibuster. Since reconciliation is a special Senate process designed to allow budget bills to avoid the 60-vote filibuster threshold–but only budget bills. So, the process is designed to root out anything that doesn’t primarily have a budget impact.
In other words, the process is designed to protect the legislative filibuster.
He very well may be correct. Stephen goes on to add that if McDonough is overruled or fired by the Republicans it will be due to other items stripped out of the bill and not the NFA items. In other words, no matter how important these items are to the gun community – and they are – they just don’t seem that important to the Republican senators.
That is a perception that needs to be changed. The time for going before Congress on bended knee is over. Every 2A organization from the NRA to state level groups needs to mobilize their members to say hell no. As I said in the beginning referring to Harold Laswell, politics is who gets what, when, and how.
We know what we want and we know we want it now.
Democrats wipe their butts with tradition and the rules whenever it suits their purposes. We should not fear “setting a precedent for them” because THEY overrule the parliamentarian at whim or will when they have the majority.
Overrule her now, then fire her after the bill is passed. Why even HAVE a GOP majority if we’re gonna let ONE unelected Commie Trash hack veto every little thing we try to do like a kid refusing to eat broccoli?
Bingo!
Also, don’t forget demanding of your R senators that they fire Thune as Majority Leader. He’s nothing more than a Temu knockoff of Mitch McConnell.
“Temu knockoff of Mitch McConnell”
That is the comment of the week! Thune doesn’t even rise to the level of Shein.
Thank you, sir. That is VERY high praise. 🙂
Granted, my girlfriend occasionally finds interesting things on Temu… but the first thing she does then is have a professional seamstress use them as templates for better-made versions tailored specifically to her and in colors more to her palette.
I’m sure my Senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, will be very supportive if I contact them. 🙁 Speaking of Senators for life.
Agree with Diamondback! Grrrr…
I have written my Senators and Congresswoman and asked my Facebook friends to do the same. I actually got a response from my Congresswoman that didn’t seem to be a canned “Thank you for contacting us.”
I flatly pointed out to them that we sent them to Washington to fight for gun owners and if they weren’t going to do that, there was no reason to vote for or support them going forward. One friend compared them to prostitutes and I told him that was an insult to prostitutes.
While you’re at it, here’s where to let Thune know what you think about him being a puppet dancing on strings pulled by a Democrat hand. Including how much you’ll donate to his Primary AND General opponents if he doesn’t Do What’s Right.
info@johnthune.com
202-224-2321
866-850-3855
Tell your Senators if the bill is not fully restore you oppose its passage. Congressmen are already upset and calling Thune out for hiding behind Parliamentarian’s skirt.
Then can your Congressman with same message..
A friend just reminded me that when Trent Lott was Majority Leader and a similar Dem parliamentarian tried these same cutesy stunts, Lott IMMEDIATELY fired and replaced the parliamentarian.
We need to remind Thune of the Lott Precedent.
In my message to Sen. Thom Tills (R-NC) and a member of the Senate Finance Committee which put both the HPA and SHORT Act in the bill, I said Elizabeth McDonough was dissing him and his fellow Republicans on the Finance Committee. That may be a message to use as no Senator likes be dissed.
My condolences. Ah, Tillis, another textbook Gross Misallocation of Viable Organs… 🙁
Could be worse, I’m stuck being unrepresented by Patty “I Wanna Make Little Terrorist Babies With Osama” bin Murray and Maria “Dot-Communist” Cantvotewell.
I just read Tillis won’t seek re-election. As Curly Bill said “Well, Bye!”
The bill will have to go to conference or concurrence by the House. That provides another lever to fix the problem. I do worry that Trump’s insistence on passing the thing will lead to a lot of suboptimal results including but not limited to this. To take another example that is way above all our paygrades, there are different versions of the SALT deductions in the two versions. I think the Senate has the right of it there. The cleanest fix is the Vance option. He obviously won’t do that without Trump but Trump might see the virtue of it on this and other issues (like Medicaid) if the alternative is the whole thing dissolving in chaos. So write the White House too. Then, after the dust settles, get a new parliamentarian or better yet make the whole silly process go away.
Personally, I think SALT needs to go away – all it does is shield Blue State voters from the consequences of their poor electoral choices.
I say this AS someone trapped deep behind enemy lines in Seatthell, land of the completely ineducable.
Not just blue state voters but rich ones. In other words, the donor class.