If we hope to preserve our right to keep and bear arms, we can't just trust that the courts will do it for us. Federal judges are nominated by politicians, after all, and politicians have a profound tendency to nominate judges who reflect their own attitudes to some degree or another.
And if anti-gun politicians reign supreme, you better believe that they're going to nominate and approve anti-gun judges for federal courts.
Luckily, the Republican Party will respect gun voters because, as I've argued before, gun voters show up.
Or do they?
We need to look at the Texas 23 primary, for a moment, to see if that's still the case.
Spoiler: It doesn't seem to be.
“U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales prevails in primary runoff over gun influencer Brandon Herrera,” The Texas Tribune reported Wednesday. “The race became a referendum on the San Antonio Republican’s vote to support a bipartisan gun control package after the Uvalde school shooting.”
It also became a referendum — and a bellwether — for how involved gun owners are willing to involve themselves in the political process, and the results will no doubt encourage Democrats looking to this and the upcoming races for weaknesses to exploit, as well as Republicans looking to maintain the status quo.
Per The New York Times, with 95% of the vote tallied, Gonzales got 15,023 votes, and Herrera got 14,616. The difference between victory and loss was a mere 407 votes.
Per the U.S. Census, there were over 575,000 people over 18 in District 23 at last count. Even factoring out foreign nationals and illegal aliens who aren’t supposed to vote, that’s still an order of magnitude of eligible citizens voluntarily disenfranchising themselves.
“Measuring ownership is tricky, but there are snapshots,” The Texas Tribune noted in a 2022 analysis. “From 1980 to 2016, 46% of Texans, on average, had a firearm in their household…” Then factor in the District 23 majority is Republican down the line, president, senators, and congressman, and it’s hardly a wild leap to conjecture that 408 more votes for Herrera were more than doable.
Especially considering what big business area gun shows are. (Don’t get me started.)
Frustratingly, getting the right candidate depended on what gun owners were willing to do, and in this case, it wasn’t enough. But the community is not a monolith, so perhaps looking at types of gun owners will give clues as to where the potential for better participation exists. It’s also relevant to recall a quote attributed to the ancient Greek statesman Pericles:
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
Writer David Codrea then goes on to touch on some of where the problem is and some of what can be done about it, which I agree with. Completely.
Look, here's the thing we all need to remember. If Republicans don't feel any reason to appease us, they won't. There are way too many establishment Republicans who would prefer to restrict guns to some degree to just assume that they'll play nice because of the letter after their name.
That's not how politics works.
Herrera may have just been a YouTuber, but he's also a true believer in the Second Amendment, from all accounts, which means he was someone gun rights supporters could trust in Washington. Instead, the establishment backed notoriously anti-gun Tony Gonzales. Why? Because they figured we didn't matter.
Based on the results, they were right.
You're out of your mind if you don't think this is going to figure into other races. The Democrats have pretty well shut out almost every remotely pro-gun Democrat that might have had a seat in Congress. Sen. Joe Manchin was probably the last and with him leaving the party and becoming an independent, that's it.
Which leaves Republicans alone to defend our rights and put pro-gun judges on the various benches.
What does it say when the establishment rallies around someone like Gonzales? What does it mean when they support an anti-gun "Republican" over someone who actually supports our right to keep and bear arms?
It means they don't have to take us as a serious threat, which means they'll appease those who they do consider such and leave us hoping against hope that pro-gun judges somehow achieve immortality.
What's sad is that it doesn't take much to change it. It takes showing up. It takes waking up on election day, walking into the polls, and casting a ballot for someone who values your rights.
In Texas, of all places, that didn't happen.
We can't allow that to become a trend or else the days of the Second Amendment actually having meaning are numbered.
