Every national election is autopsied and studied for signs that the electorate issued a “mandate” to Washington that cannot be ignored. What, if anything, did the people demonstrate was their priority on November’s first Tuesday?
If you listen to anti-gun radicals, the results were a call to dismantle the Second Amendment and enact sweeping, oppressive gun control measures across the nation.
Gun rights opponents perceived a groundswell in grassroots support
It did not take long for political pundits to weigh in with their interpretations of what happened in the nation’s voting booths. As the dust settled on the day after polls closed, Brady United posted on X that voters made their voices heard.
“These midterms sent a clear message: Americans across party lines want leaders who prioritize public safety and reject the Trump administration’s ‘guns everywhere’ agenda,” the group claimed. “With gun violence prevention majorities in Congress, it’s now time to deliver.”
That warning was not enough for Brady, which also issued a press release claiming total victory.
“These results are a decisive repudiation of attacks on the American people led by the Trump administration, including systemic attacks on our public safety,” Brady President Kris Brown said. “This election marks a mandate to enact and implement robust public safety policies that will meaningfully address the crisis of American gun violence.”
There is a crisis, of that there is no doubt. But public policy should be busy with keeping violent criminals out of our communities and making punishments for harming innocent victims more severe.
Instead of telling good citizens they cannot defend themselves, policymakers would be better served by strongly supporting the right to keep and bear arms as a sure deterrent to violence.
In 2026, Americans own more firearms than at any time in US history
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearm industry trade group and a measured voice of sanity in the raging gun control debate, noted that voters just before the election ranked gun issues far down their list of concerns.
“An October Pew Research Center survey found that 84 percent of registered voters considered the economy very important to their congressional vote,” the NSSF reported. “The future of democracy followed at 73 percent, healthcare at 68 percent, and education at 62 percent. “Gun policy ranked 10th among 16 issues surveyed, with 45 percent calling it very important. That was down from 57 percent in a comparable October 2022 survey.”
In other words, hardly the mandate the gun-grabbers now claim.
Much of that indifference may stem from FBI numbers showing the single largest yearly drop in violent crime since record-keeping began nearly 90 years ago. And with firearm ownership rates at record highs and more than a million guns sold through retailers every month, it’s obvious that “the people” are past blaming inanimate objects for criminal actions.
To be certain, the tide dramatically turned on gun rights for the near future. Parties in power typically lose seats and even legislative control during off-year elections, so the pattern is cyclical.
That does not in any way negate the results but only puts them in perspective.
The administration is still pro-Second Amendment and has more than two years left to defend the right to keep and bear arms. The Department of Justice, despite Harmeet Dhillon’s sudden resignation leaving a sizeable hole in the agency’s gun rights push, is still on the right side of most firearm-related issues.
And the U.S. Supreme Court, while not the wild-eyed gun-waving radicals some would paint them to be, still has a solid majority that usually recognizes threats to Second Amendment rights as they come.
All is not lost. But those who would confiscate your firearms are about to wield considerably more power, which means fierce legislative and legal battles for the foreseeable future.
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