Donald Trump is no longer just a former president. He's now President-elect Donald Trump. He's going back to the White House. Luckily, he already knows his way around the place.
For gun rights supporters, this is about the best news we could get. Not only did Trump win the presidency, but Republicans took the Senate back. It's still too early to call the House as being a Republican majority, but unless the leads flip in the remaining races, they'll have it. That means the odds of federal gun control are effectively nil barring something weird happening.
That's good news in most gun rights supporters' eyes.
But it's bad news for another group of people.
Some gun violence prevention groups said Wednesday that they plan to double down in their fight for stronger firearm-control laws in the wake of former President Donald Trump recapturing the White House and promising to roll back President Joe Biden's efforts to curb the national plague.
During his victorious campaign, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, voiced opposition to most of Biden's executive orders to combat the scourge that the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found to be the leading cause of death in the United States for adolescents under the age of 19 for three straight years.
"The election of Donald Trump is deeply troubling for our safety and freedom from gun violence," Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement Wednesday. "And that's why we are doubling down on our work and fighting harder than ever."
Gun violence was a big issue during the campaign. In an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released in August, gun violence was ranked eighth in importance among voters after the economy, inflation, health care, protecting democracy, crime and safety, immigration and the Supreme Court.
In preliminary national exit polls analyzed by ABC News, voters said they trusted Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, 50% to 48%, in handling the issue of crime and safety.
Aw, shucks. I'm so terribly upset that they're upset.
And by "terribly upset," I mean "not in the least."
Of course, I do figure these groups are going to keep pushing for gun control. That's what they do. People give them money to do so and if they stop, people stop donating. It's as simple as that. The fact that I actually think most of them want exactly what they're pushing for factors in, too, but even if they didn't, I don't think much would change.
But let's understand, based on these numbers, it seems that while many people may favor a few gun control measures, they don't see it as the answer to our crime problem. That's good news because it has the benefit of being true.
After all, we know criminals aren't getting guns through legal avenues. They're getting them illegally, either through black market purchases or theft. New laws won't change that in the least, and crime won't change just because you put new restrictions on law-abiding gun owners.
But the anti-gun groups will push for it just the same.
In the end, though, what they want is largely irrelevant because, at least at the federal level, they've got no hope in hell of it happening.
Of course, that means Republicans have to take steps to reduce crime and do so quickly. A slow, gradual decline in the crime rate won't likely be enough, and the midterms are coming up whether anyone wants to think about that or not just now.
For now, though, the right people are having a miserable week and I'm not losing a moment's sleep over it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member