Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Partisan gerrymanders stopped gun controls in five states, think tank says

United States and bullets
halbergman/Getty Images

One of the most prominent talking points in the entire democracy reform movement is that curbing money's sway over elections is a prerequisite to fixing every one of the nation's biggest problems. Now critics of partisan gerrymandering are trying to piggyback on that concept.

A new study concludes that aggressive legislative mapmaking by Republican majorities is responsible for the lack of any new gun control laws in five states during a decade marked by the accelerating pace of mass shootings.

In issuing the report Tuesday, the Center for American Progress, one of Washington's most influential liberal think tanks, joined the lengthening roster of groups advocating for states to take the drawing of political boundaries away from the politicians themselves in and turn the responsibility over to independent and nonpartisan panels.


Fourteen states have already given such panels authority to draw state legislative lines starting in 2021, after the census exposes population shifts mandating new lines that confirm with the Constitution's one-person-one-vote requirement. Eight of them have also assigned the next congressional maps to commissions.

Several states with the full array of partisan power structures — reliably Democratic, solidly Republican and battleground — may soon join that list through legislation or a citizen-driven referendum, but maybe not in time for the next redistricting.

All five of the states studied by the Center for American Progress, or CAP, have been on center stage in the gerrymandering debate: North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia.

"In each of these states, it is likely, in the absence of partisan gerrymandering, that the legislature would have enacted measures to strengthen gun laws — measures that could have saved lives," the report concluded.

That's because all their legislative maps were successfully drawn at the start of the 2010s to assure that Republicans — who have remained almost unanimously opposed to additional regulation of firearms or new curbs on gun ownership — retained legislative control no matter how strong the Democratic vote in subsequent elections. And in last year's midterm, CAP notes, the GOP held control in four of the legislatures even though Democratic candidates won more total votes in state House contests in all of those states and in state Senate elections in three.

While 32 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted a combined 110 gun control measures in the nearly two years since 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., the report details, no such bills have come close to becoming law in any of those five states despite extensive campaigns in each place.

"Partisan gerrymandering is one of the reasons why a public that supports stronger gun laws can be represented by state legislators who do nothing, even in the wake of severe episodes of gun violence," CAP said. "Even when there is bipartisan support for a particular gun policy, conservative leadership in many state legislatures persistently refuse to allow such bills to have a hearing or a vote, even if the bills have bipartisan support."

The situation is particularly problematic, the authors say, because a disproportionate share of gun violence victims are young people and members of racial minorities who live in deep blue Democratic urban areas — but policies that could help them are under the control of Republican red officials with disproportionate political power.

The good news, they say, is that overt partisanship in mapmaking is in jeopardy in all five states.

North Carolina's legislative lines were redrawn this fall after a panel of judges declared the old map a violation of the state Constitution's "fair elections" clause. A very similar ruling two years ago voided a Pennsylvania congressional map and could threaten the legislative maps as well. Michigan voters a year ago voted to create a nonpolitical redistricting commission by next year. A similar proposal could be on the Virginia ballot as soon as next fall. And legislation to do the same has growing grassroots support in Wisconsin.

Read More

Just the Facts: Impact of the Big Beautiful Bill on Health Care

U.S. President Donald Trump takes the stage during a reception for Republican members of the House of Representatives in the East Room of the White House on July 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump thanked GOP lawmakers for passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla

Just the Facts: Impact of the Big Beautiful Bill on Health Care

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

What are the new Medicaid work requirements, and are they more lenient or more restrictive than what previously existed?

Keep ReadingShow less
The Crux of the Schism: What defines being American?
U.S.A. flag
Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

The Crux of the Schism: What defines being American?

Undeniably, the U.S. body politic is in crisis today and has likely been unraveling for more than a decade. The rancorous polarization best exemplified by the demonization of MAGA on one side, and the elite establishment on the other, has become a daily preoccupation in many circles. True, there is undoubtedly a large group of Americans in a broadly defined center whose voices get drowned out by the extremes who scream the loudest. Yet despite this caveat, we are arguably witnessing the most ominous threat we’ve faced since the Civil War tore us asunder more than 150 years ago.

Much scrutiny focuses on the political, economic, and social aspects of the schism, all of which are important and in play. However, I would venture to guess that at its core, the disunion lies in the clashing concepts of what being an American signifies, and further, how these concepts have collided over the course of three centuries. While often not debated forthrightly, the battle can be distilled down to two conflicting views on the fundamental question of what constitutes being an American.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hey Bro! Do You Think Trump Has Your Back?

man wearing a red baseball cap, yelling

AI generated

Hey Bro! Do You Think Trump Has Your Back?

This is an open letter to all bros. You're angry. You're disillusioned. And you have every right to be. The question is, what do you do about it? How do you do something that's going to improve your life, your future?

Does the answer lie in a political party? Both Republicans and Democrats certainly want your vote. However, you don't feel that you can look to the Democratic Party for help. They seem to be particularly interested in women, people of color, and immigrants. They haven't spoken to you or done anything for you.

Keep ReadingShow less