Right now, if you listen to the media, there’s not a lot of good news, really. Sure, Democrats lost ground in the House, but it’s possible that we’ll see a 50-50 split in the Senate and unless the president’s legal challenges pan out, we’re going to see Joe Biden in the Oval Office. It’s not exactly a great time to be alive, even without the pandemic, the lockdowns, and all that other stuff.

Yet there is some long-term good news that came out of the election.

You see, the GOP managed to gain more control over state legislatures, and that has Democrats worried. Why? Redistricting.

Republicans were able to fend off challenges from Democrats trying to flip control of state legislatures in key states. That means that in 2021, Republicans will control a majority of redistricting efforts across the country.

Democrats have been unable to flip even a single state legislative chamber as of Friday afternoon, but they remain hopeful that one or both of Arizona’s legislative chambers will flip. Vote counts are still underway in the Grand Canyon state.

Meanwhile, Republicans gained two new state trifectas in New Hampshire and Montana, after the GOP ran up majorities in the New Hampshire House and Senate and flipped the Montana governorship. A state trifecta is when a single party controls both chambers of the legislature and the governorship.

“Democrats wasted more than a half of a billion dollars on a pathetic attempt to flip even a single state legislative chamber,” said RSLC deputy executive director David Abrams to CNBC in an email. “We had better candidates, better messages, and better data – and saved the country from a decade of socialist majorities in Congress. We feel pretty good about that.”

Democrats targeted 13 states and Republicans targeted 12 states, including Florida, Texas and North Carolina. A lot of money was involved in those races. State legislative candidates raised over $900 million dollars in 2020 alone.

While Democrats are going to spend a lot of time decrying gerrymandering, the truth of the matter is that they’re only upset they won’t get to spearhead the efforts.

It’s not that they think gerrymandering is bad. They simply think it’s bad when Republicans do it.

What was it President Obama said? Something about how elections have consequences? Well, if you want to play that game, then it’s important to remember that such a thing applies to all elections, even at the state and local level. Redistricting is going to be a thing because 2020 is a census year. What follows the census is a redrawing of legislative maps.

That happens at the state level, and it also means that those lines are likely to be redrawn in a way that will favor Republicans.

Whether or not this is right is a debate that we can certainly have, of course, but it’s important to remember that this kind of thing has gone on for decades. It’s nothing new and really, the only real issue Democrats have with gerrymandering is when someone else gets to do it.

That’s good news for gun owners because redistricting may well push out some anti-gun lawmakers and limit the threat we face to our Second Amendment rights.

It’s not as good as there being no threat at all, but we take what we can get.