On Steve Kerr and Gun Control

Or: The difference between liberals and leftists

I wanted to expand on a point I tried to make on last week’s episode of the Lefty Specialists, about Steve Kerr’s comments on gun control. For anyone who missed what Kerr said in the wake of the Uvalde shooting, here are his full comments:

I think it’s crucial to watch the video, because Kerr’s obvious emotion is important, but here is the text of what he says:

“Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed 400 miles from here, and a teacher.* And in the last ten days, we’ve had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo. We’ve had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California. And now we have children murdered at school… When are we going to do something?!

I’m tired—I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devasted families that are out there. I’m so tired of the—excuse me, I’m sorry—I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough!

There’s 50 senators, right now, who refuse to vote on HR8, which is a background check rule that the House passed a couple years ago. It’s been sitting there for two years, and there’s a reason they won’t vote on it: to hold on to power. So I ask you, Mitch McConnell, I ask all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence, and school shootings, and supermarket shootings—I ask you: Are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children? And our elderly, and our churchgoers? Because that’s what it looks like. It’s what we do every week.

So I’m fed up, I’ve had enough. We’re going to play the game tonight, but I want every person here, every person listening to this, to think about your own child, or grandchild, or mother father sister brother… how would you feel if this happened to you today? We can’t get numb to this. We can’t sit here and just read about it and go, ‘Well, let’s have a moment of silence. Yeah, Go dubs! Come on, Mavs, let’s go!’ That’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to go play a basketball game.

And 50 senators in Washington are going to hold us hostage… Do you realize that 90% of Americans, regardless of political party, want background check, universal background check? 90% of us! We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington who refuse to even put it to a vote despite what we the American people want. They won’t vote on it because they want to hold onto their own power! It’s pathetic! I’ve had enough!”

*As if the tragedy wasn’t bad enough, both these totals would be revised up, to 19 children and two teachers, after Kerr spoke.

On last week’s podcast, I was critical of these comments, but it’s not that I don’t find them sympathetic or compelling. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is precisely because of how eloquent and relatable Kerr is here that I think it’s worth dwelling on his commentary.

Since starting this newsletter, I’ve looked for ways to differentiate what I generally call “leftism” from a more conventional liberalism that is increasingly common in sports analysis.* Often, that means picking up subjects that are, frankly, pretty stupid and low-stakes, like when ESPN fires someone in the name of “antiracism.” Or it means quibbling over the framing of an HBO segment.

*The language here can be tricky. There are likely many people who would categorize Kerr’s comments as “far left,” since for many people the term “left” just means “very supportive of the Democratic Party or its policies.” I hope this is clear, but I definitely do not mean it that way. The problem is that the word “left” naturally evokes the left-right spectrum, which is an occasionally useful but also very limiting way of conceiving of the politics—there are more than two political ideologies. It’s just that all the words are ALSO flawed: “Socialist” invokes a historical tradition not every leftist agrees with; “radical” is inherently marginalizing; “anti-capitalist” is only a definition in opposition to something; etc. Frankly, all the words sound like branding to me, and none are perfect. I generally use “leftist” or “socialist” but the point is that I’m hoping to describe something that isn’t just “liberal, but moreso.”

But Kerr’s monologue is useful because it is NOT low-hanging fruit. I think it’s hard to hear Kerr talk and not sympathize with his points, and even more with his emotions. On the other hand, his comments reflect the failures of a liberal analysis.

The first problem comes when his emotions first bubble over, as he yells, “When are we going to do something?” This way of framing the issue—as one primarily about inaction—is a distinctly liberal perspective. In reality, of course, “we” (meaning, the US government) have done many “somethings” about school shootings. It’s just that all of them have been terrible. Since Columbine, the number of cops in schools has exploded. Metal detectors in schools have increased. To combat shootings outside of schools, we have adopted measures like stop-and-frisk and other police-based measures of arresting people for guns.

Of course, none of this has worked at preventing gun deaths. And the negative consequences are profound. But the problem here is clearly not inaction.

Liberals, though, have such faith in the dominant institutions of American capitalist democracy to solve problems that, if a problem persists, it must be because “we” have not tried to fix it yet. Hence the constant calls from liberals to “do something” and not “get numb to this,” as Kerr says later in his speech. The issue is always that some ill-defined “we” have not done the right thing: We don’t care enough or we haven’t voted the right way or we’re not paying enough attention. Because obviously if we DID do the right thing, then the problem would be solved, since the system is supposed to solve problems our problems, right?

Certainly, the impulse to “do something” is relatable here. But personally, when I hear that the government is going to “do something,” I get extremely worried. Most of the time, when that happens, it’s not good!

To Kerr’s credit, he at least specifies the “something” to be done: He wants the Senate to vote on H.R. 8, the universal background check bill that has passed the House of Representatives. This is… I mean, I don’t know. Background checks, in general, are a pretty disgusting way of discriminating against the overpoliced poor. It also seems like the perpetrators of all three shootings Kerr mentions passed background checks, and so this law would not have prevented any of those tragedies. On the other hand, it seems like anything that might slow the sale of guns would, at least at the margins, reduce gun violence.

Either way, this is not exactly a game-changer, policy-wise. H.R. 8 is like so much legislation crafted by the Democratic Party today. That is, it’s not really meant to solve a problem, but to make the Republican Party look extreme for its opposition. Bills like this make some sense for political messaging, but the problem is that liberals convince themselves that they are good policy. Most famously, this happened with Obamacare, which was modelled on legislation initially pitched by the conservative Heritage Foundation and then pushed by a Republican governor in Massachusetts. The Democrats did this to attract Republican support. But that did not work, so instead they ended up defending a complicated, bad policy on its merits.

Liberals do this all the time, again out of a misplaced faith in the system. Instead of figuring out what would actually solve a problem, they figure out what policy the system can produce, and then convince themselves that policy must be the solution. So if the only thing the Senate can realistically pass on gun control is a universal background check bill (and even that stretches the definition of “realistically”), then liberals like Kerr will convince themselves that universal background checks are the solution we need.

The final way that Kerr’s comments are emblematic of liberalism is how he blames the Senate’s failure on the personal selfishness of Senators: “There’s 50 senators, right now, who refuse to vote on HR8…and there’s a reason they won’t vote on it: to hold on to power.” The suggestion here, I suppose, is that Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans are somehow too scared of the electoral consequences to vote on the bill. It’s not that they might oppose universal background checks for substantive reasons.

Surely, there are some Republicans who fear the wrath of the NRA, or could not win a Republican primary if they crossed the party line on guns. But for the vast majority of these 50 Senators, the most likely reason that they oppose universal background checks is that they oppose universal background checks. It’s not that they “want to hold on to power” (ignoring the fact that, theoretically, the way to “hold on to power” in a democracy is to do what voters want); it’s that they think this is how they are meant to use that power.

The issue with the Republican Party is not that its Senators are too cowardly to act. In the wake of Uvalde, they have offered many policy ideas they would support—it’s just that none of them are gun control. They are willing to turn schools into prisons, or to further discriminate against people with mental illness, or increase funding for cops. Because those are the policy solutions compatible with modern conservatism. But liberals like Kerr tend to downplay ideology, insisting instead that there are reasonable solutions that could make everyone happy if everyone played fairly. In the choice between Socialism and Barbarism, liberals would prefer to meet somewhere in the middle.

Kerr ends by pointing out that 90% of Americans support universal background checks, declaring that we are being “held hostage” by Senators who refuse to vote. This is the point that really sets him off, before he storms out of the press conference. And it should! It is profoundly anti-democratic that policies with such widespread support have essentially no chance of becoming law. But the difference is that Kerr sees this as a failure of the system, and to me it looks like the system working exactly as it was intended.

This might not seem like a very substantive difference—more one of attitude and perspective. And it is true that in a bifurcated political system, where all perspectives are pushed into one of two parties, then leftists and liberals are aligned on most individual issues. But the difference in worldviews is important. There is a liberal faith in the system, in its institutions and processes, that leftists and socialists simply do not share.

I once had a conversation with a fellow socialist who told me, that in his experience, the real hard part about socialist organizing is not convincing people to agree with you. Most people already intuitively agree with the basics of socialism, whether they realize it or not: they hate their boss or their landlord; they believe health care and housing should be a right, not a commodity; they don’t believe the existence of life on this planet is secondary to the profitability of fossil fuel companies; etc.

The problem is not that people really disagree with those statements—it’s that they don’t think those things can be changed. The violence and injustice of everyday life are just natural laws. The job of socialists is really to convince them that a better world IS possible.

And then liberals come along and say ACTUALLY the system works great, if only we could make this or that tweak to it. If only we could “do something!”—as if something has not already been done—or if only we don’t “get numb to this”—as if anyone is indifferent to school shootings—or if only our leaders stopped “holding on to power”—as if political power is something to be avoided… then suddenly the institutions that have produced all these problems would turn around and start fixing them.

It is again, understandable, why someone like Kerr would cling to liberalism. It can sound hopeless to suggest that the system has no hope of fixing itself. But this doesn’t mean solutions are impossible, just that they require a more complete overhaul of the system. It requires ditching our institutions for a more socialist future. For liberals like Kerr, who have benefitted a lot from our current institutions, that can be tough to admit. But it is only realistic. It is easier to imagine the end of capitalism, then getting 60 votes in the Senate for a universal background check bill.