Lisa McCormick says a political system intoxicated by donor money is not a democracy

In the sobering arithmetic of American politics, a grim pattern has emerged from the chambers of elected legislatures, one that turns conventional wisdom on its head in the wake of national tragedy.

While the public might expect a tightening of firearm laws after a mass shooting, rigorous academic research reveals the opposite often occurs, a paradox that anti-establishment progressive Democrat Lisa McCormick points to as a symptom of a political system intoxicated by donor money.

A definitive study by Harvard’s Michael Luca and Deepak Malhotra, plus UCLA’s Christopher Poliquin, published in the Journal of Public Economics, examined a quarter-century of state legislation.

Their finding was stark: following a mass shooting, state legislatures were more likely to loosen gun regulations than to tighten them.

This counterintuitive trend was driven overwhelmingly by Republican-controlled legislatures, which, in the year after a shooting, introduced 50% more bills and ultimately enacted 120% more laws that made firearms easier to buy, own, and carry.

McCormick, a long-time critic of the influence of money in politics, connects these legislative actions directly to a corrupted system.

“Public sentiment is no match for a well-funded special interest,” she said. “While 60% of Americans favor stricter gun laws, the intensity of a minority view, backed by an industry’s economic might, consistently wins the day in our legislatures. It is a brutal lesson in how power actually operates.”

The study suggests that the issue of gun rights is so central to the GOP's political identity that it mobilizes them to act decisively, even when public outrage would seem to favor their opponents. This has resulted in laws, passed after tragedies in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, that expanded programs for arming teachers.

McCormick argues that this dynamic is not confined to gun violence but is a fundamental flaw in governance, recently exacerbated by the Supreme Court. In a 6-3 ruling, the court overturned the bribery conviction of a former Indiana mayor, drawing a legal distinction between a quid-pro-quo bribe and a gratuity for a past official act. “This decision continues a disturbing pattern of making it more difficult to prosecute public corruption,” McCormick said. “It is little wonder our elections feel more like auctions.”

While a better-organized gun control movement has seen some recent successes, passing hundreds of new restrictions since the Parkland shooting, McCormick contends that the core problem remains unaddressed.

She chides colleagues for proposing mere disclosure of political spending by government contractors, a move she sees as insufficient.

“Simply telling people which corporations are paying off politicians is hardly as effective as prohibiting bribery and corruption,” she said. “We must outlaw the practice, not just take notes on it.”

McCormick said that a study conducted by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin I Page concluded that America stopped being a democracy several years ago.

“Our political system has transformed over several decades from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power,” said McCormick. “Where money allows candidates to be drowned out, voters lose their power. That's how we got here, with governors from Goldman Sachs and a fascist reality TV character in the White House.”

For McCormick, the research from Princeton and Northwestern, as well as Harvard and UCLA, provides more than data; it offers a diagnosis.

It reveals a system where the logic of representation is too often supplanted by the calculus of campaign finance, where a moment of national mourning can be transformed, through the levers of power, into an opportunity to further loosen the very laws that a majority of citizens wish to see strengthened.

It is an American story of how, too often, the will of the people is silenced by the clatter of money.