In 1994, I was a Navy Corpsman stationed in Portsmouth, Virginia. I wasn't involved in politics at all. I voted because I saw it as my civic duty, but it was a time in my life when I didn't really pay as much attention to political news as I did both before and after my time in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club. But Bill Clinton sure paid attention. He, like President Donald Trump this year, got trounced.
And there are some parallels that need to be considered.
At least, that's what Tanya Metaksa argues at The Gun Mag:
In his 2004 memoir, My Life, Bill Clinton linked the 1994 crime bill’s assault-weapons ban to Democrats’ election losses, including the defeat of House Speaker Tom Foley. He wrote:
“The NRA had a great night. They beat both Speaker Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, two of the ablest members of Congress, who had warned me this would happen. Foley was the first Speaker to be defeated in more than a century.”
The Warning Clinton Said He Disregarded
Earlier in the memoir, Clinton recalled that Foley, House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks urged him to remove the assault-weapons ban from the crime bill. They warned that vulnerable Democrats had already defied the NRA by supporting the Brady bill, and that another gun-control vote could cost them their seats. Clinton acknowledged:
“Foley, Gephardt, and Brooks were right and I was wrong.”
Clinton emphasized that Brooks had opposed the assault-weapons ban itself but ultimately voted for the overall crime bill containing it. That distinction did not spare Brooks from the NRA’s opposition. Clinton wrote:
“The NRA was an unforgiving master: one strike and you’re out.”
He also reported the gun lobby’s claim that it had defeated 19 of the 24 members it targeted, adding, “They did at least that much damage.”
2026 Election Analysis
One of the best of many 2026 election analyses I read is by Texas Senator John Cornyn, who was not only abandoned by Trump but actively undermined by him, leading to Attorney General Ken Paxton becoming the nominee. Paxton then lost to James Talarico in one of the biggest Senate switches. Senate Majority Leader John Thune had pressed Trump to support Cornyn as the stronger bet to hold the seat. Trump backed Paxton anyway.
Senator John Cornyn’s Analysis
In this case, guns were also part of the backdrop. After the Uvalde school shooting, Cornyn helped negotiate the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which alienated gun owners and Trump, who attacked the law as a step toward taking away Americans’ guns. The gun issue clearly mattered politically, but the record doesn’t show it was Trump’s only reason for his choice, and it shouldn’t be treated that way.
It's not. Cornyn was the prototypical RINO, and there was little reason to keep him around. He'd never been the champion for a lot of the president's policies that Trump wanted, for better or worse, but his decision to not just vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, but spearhead the effort to rally enough Republican votes to get it passed was, at least for me, a step too far.
I eagerly called for Cornyn to be primaried, and I was glad to see him defeated.
In hindsight, I could probably make the case that Cornyn might have held his seat against Talarico. Paxton turned out to be a drain on the entire Republican ticket, and that contributed to Texas seeming to roll blue.
But in 1994, gun control shepherded a changing of the guard in Congress. In the Year of Our Lord 2026, it may not have gone quite that far, but it definitely contributed to at least one seat being put up for grabs; only this time, the issue didn't come down in our favor.
Them's the breaks, as my daddy used to put it.
In 1994, the assault weapon ban was a bridge too far for a lot of people, and it started a time when groups like the NRA absolutely had to be listened to, not because of their money, necessarily, but because they could call on an army of voters who would go out and turn the tide of elections. In 2026, the NRA is much diminished from what it was back then, and there just wasn't the same turnout this time around, at least for gun owners. Even though there are more of us than ever, one downside of the politically diverse nature of modern gun ownership is that we don't have enough people who make gun rights a priority when they vote.
People need to understand how gun rights serve not just as an issue in and of itself, but as a proxy of how people feel about the constitutionally protected rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Someone who stands for the plain text of the Second Amendment will not, for example, support so-called hate speech laws because the First Amendment is just as absolute as the Second.
We took it on the chin a week ago.
It's time to get back in the ring and change things.
