AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

Guns are a divisive issue. By now, anyone who doesn’t know that hasn’t been paying attention to much of anything to do with the political landscape over the last year or so.

However, it’s important to remember that while we know that we can’t trust all Republicans with our gun rights, some Democrats actually do support the Second Amendment. While the party clearly demands loyalty, not everyone is interested in playing ball, particularly on gun rights. One who apparently didn’t, a freshman representative from Maine, is now the target of an anti-gun effort to see him ousted.

A gun-control advocacy group plans to launch $200,000 in digital ads targeting members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Maine’s newest congressman, who voted last week against expanding private sale background checks. U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District, voted against HR 8, which would expand background checks on all gun sales, including private transfers.

Everytown for Gun Safety, with support from Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety in America, will focus on seven members of the House who opposed HR 8 — four Republicans and two Democrats — in their Facebook advertisements, which direct constituents to contact their elected representatives and voice their concerns.

Maine’s freshman congressman, one of two Democrats to vote against the bill, represents the state’s most rural district, whose constituents voted against the Question 3 referendum in 2016, Golden said last week. He called HR 8 it a “mirror image” of Question 3, citing its limit on personal transfers as “a cause of concern for me.”

But for anti-gunners, that’s irrelevant.

You see, you’re not supposed to do as your constituents want, but what your betters within the anti-gun movement would have you do. They can’t handle free thinking or anything of the sort. They want mindless automatons who will vote as they direct them, not the people who put them in office.

The truth is, Golden made the right call. If he was elected in a rural district then the chances are he was elected by pro-gun voters who voted for the man, not the party. The last thing he should do if he wants more than a single term in Congress is to toe that party line. That party isn’t what got him elected, not really. It was the voters he’s representing.

To be fair to the Democratic Party, they’re making no mention of targeting him. These are all liberal groups, but liberal and Democrat aren’t synonymous. There’s a big overlap, but not a 1:1 ratio.

Still, the fact that anti-gun groups have decided to target this guy only makes me that much more interested in him — the enemy of my enemy and all that.

More than that, though, Democrats don’t understand that their efforts may well backfire. After all, I’m not alone in my thinking. Many who didn’t support Golden in 2018 may well flock to his banner in 2020. After all, he’s now made it clear he’s not beholden to Nancy Pelosi.

Meanwhile, the Left is eating itself as it battles on over guns.

It’s quite amusing, to be honest.