We Need a Two-Party System, Part 2

Last month, in response to indications that the Democratic National Convention drafting committee’s party platform policy decisions appeared to portend movement by the Democratic Party closer to the Republican Party, if not any meaningful sense of “the center,” I wrote that a  functioning democracy needs a national political environment that features at least two political parties, and that, right now, it looks like America’s may be collapsing down to one.

The Democrats, of course, are not the only group shying away from their ostensible policy goals. In the lead up to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, reports surfaced that, despite Ohio’s status as an open-carry state, “No guns will be allowed in the convention center where Trump will speak — nor in the tightest security zone immediately around it.”

The Republican Party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has stated a general opposition to gun-free zones, however, and it is a position many in his Party share. One of the principles underlying this belief is that, had they lawfully been permitted to bear arms, “good” people would be able to fight back, by use of firearms, against “bad” people committing violent acts in places like schools and movie theaters.

The statistical rarity of this occurrence– ten times in the last nineteen years or so, by one careful count— only reinforces the pro-gun position. After all, had more honest citizens been allowed to carry firearms in public, they could have arrested even more violent criminal behavior.

Yet, a gathering of, presumably, the most ardent adherents to this thesis, taking place against a legal background that otherwise would have authorized such armament, guns were not allowed. If not at the RNC, then where?

The best thing for America might not be a powerful political faction that favors the proliferation of deadly weapons; nevertheless, the nation needs policy makers who adhere in practice to the policy positions they espouse. For a policy maker to do otherwise is to be dishonest with his or her constituents, an act both more inimical of and, unfortunately, likely more prevalent across this republic.

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