The multiple political dramas to which Americans were subjected in June and July of this year have understandably focused minds on the coming presidential race. We saw a sitting president reveal himself to be unfit to continue as a candidate, and then, after a brief period of denial, drop out of consideration. We saw a former president—and active candidate—come within an inch of being murdered on live TV. We saw the Democrats switch out their nominee during an election year for the first time since 1968. It has been an extraordinary time—perhaps, even, the most extraordinary in 50 years.
And yet, as enticing as it might be to keep our attentions focused on the contest for the White House, it remains the case that the policy landscape of the next two to six years will be resolved as much in the halls of Congress as in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. For the Second Amendment, as for anything else, the coming plebiscite will matter from the top all the way down to the bottom. There is a reason that our ballots are so extensive.
In many ways, the most-important institution in American national life is the U.S. Senate. The Senate decides what legislation will live or die. The Senate decides which judges will sit on our federal courts—including the Supreme Court of the United States. The Senate decides who will be permitted to serve in the president’s cabinet. The Senate decides which international treaties will be approved and which will be rejected. And, if it comes to it, the Senate conducts any impeachment trials that are sent to it by the U.S. House of Representatives. To state it as simply as possible: a Senate that boasts a majority of pro-Second Amendment politicians is a Senate that can do an enormous amount to protect the right to keep and bear arms even in such cases as when the U.S. House of Representatives and the presidency are run by politicians who are hostile to that right. By all accounts, Americans who wish to preserve their Second Amendment freedoms ought to focus as much on the Senate as on any other lever of power.
This year, the elections for the Senate are particularly volatile. This is in part because a number of high-profile swing-state senators are retiring (namely: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan), and in part because this cycle features an unusual number of genuinely competitive states. It seems unlikely that, with Manchin’s retirement, West Virginia will stay in the hands of the Democratic Party. But, elsewhere, the races are there for the taking. In my estimation, there are seven states that could go either way (Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin) and three that could produce upsets given the right set of circumstances (Virginia, New Mexico and Maine). At present, the Senate is divided 51-49 in the Democrats’ favor. Constitutionally, the vice president provides the tie-breaking vote when the Senate is divided 50-50, which means that, if the Republicans were to win the presidency, they would need just one seat to flip control of the chamber, and, if they were to lose the presidency, they would need two.
The closest race will likely take place in Montana, where the incumbent Democrat, Jon Tester, is taking on a Republican challenger, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy. Historically, Jon Tester has been a touch friendlier to the Second Amendment than many in his party, but, in recent years, his mask has begun to slip. In 2013, Tester voted to impose “universal background checks” on the American people. In 2022, he voted for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a vague, slapdash and dangerous law that applied special checks on Americans aged between 18 to 21, attempted to bribe the states into passing “red-flag” laws and made it easier for the executive branch to foist “universal background checks” on law-abiding gun-owners by executive fiat. In addition, Tester refused to vote for all of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, while voting to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Both Kagan and Sotomayor dissented in the key Bruen case in 2022; Sotomayor dissented in the McDonald v. Chicago case in 2010; and, in 2024, Brown Jackson favorably cited Justice Stevens’ preposterous contention that “the Second Amendment did not reach possession of firearms for purely private activities.” Come election time, Tester is keen to present himself as a “moderate,” but that ship sailed long ago. Indeed, there is no mention whatsoever of the right to keep and bear arms in any of Tester’s campaign literature. His opponent, by contrast, has described the Second Amendment as “a fundamental constitutional right that must and will always be protected under my watch.”
In Ohio, the incumbent Democrat, Sherrod Brown, is being challenged by Republican Bernie Moreno. In recent years, Ohio has been in the habit of voting exclusively for pro-Second Amendment politicians at the federal level, having gone for Donald Trump twice in a row and for J.D. Vance in 2022. For some reason, however, Sherrod Brown has managed to hold on. Like Tester, Brown likes to cultivate a centrist image, but, like Tester, he is no such thing. Brown has an “F” rating from the NRA-PVF and a 100% rating from the Brady Campaign, having voted for every single gun-control measure that has come across his desk, and against every pro-Second Amendment judge he was asked to consider. In 2022, Brown responded to a letter from the Buckeye Firearms Association by writing that “I support banning assault weapons in this country,” that “I voted in support of the original assault weapons ban in 1994, and I voted to renew it” and that “I am also a cosponsor of the Background Check Expansion Act.” In the letter, Brown affirmed his support for indefinitely denying gun purchases when the NICS system is inconclusive, for spending taxpayer money on CDC-funded gun-control advocacy and for removing the Second Amendment rights of any American who ends up on a government watchlist. These positions, Brown claimed, were “common sense.” His opponent, Bernie Moreno, could not be more different. Among the “16 priorities” that Moreno has laid out should he win is the vow to “vigorously defend our constitutional rights, especially the Second Amendment.”
The contrast in Arizona is even keener than in Ohio. Thanks to Sinema’s retirement, there is no incumbent in the election, which will pit Democrat Ruben Gallego against Republican Kari Lake. Astonishingly, given that he is running in staunchly pro-gun Arizona, Gallego is a veritable caricature of anti-Second Amendment extremism. While in the House of Representatives, he voted for HR 1808, which would have banned all AR-type rifles; for HR 2377, which would have created a federal “red-flag” system; for HR 8, which would have imposed “universal background checks”; and for HR 7910, which would have made it illegal for Americans under 21 to buy semi-automatic firearms. While doing so, Gallego mocked gun owners—whom he said “have to have a bunch of guns, a jacked-up truck with some of those little cow nuts hanging in the back”—and responded to Sen. Ted Cruz’s defense of the Second Amendment by tweeting, “F**k you @tedcruz”. Lake, Gallego’s opponent, is an NRA member who not only opposes any additional gun control, but promised in 2022 that, if she were governor, Arizona would “not recognize unconstitutional gun laws.”
In neighboring Nevada, the incumbent Democrat, Jackie Rosen, is running against a war hero, Captain Sam Brown. Like Ruben Gallego in Arizona, Rosen is badly out of step with her state, having expressed support during her last election for banning so-called “assault weapons” and magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds; having called for a national “red-flag” system; having co-
sponsored a bill in the Senate that would have imposed a federal background check on every firearms transfer in the country; and having voted against the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and then supporting the elevation of Ketanji Brown Jackson. Rosen’s Republican opponent, Sam Brown, takes a completely opposite stance. In Brown’s view, “the Constitution unequivocally guarantees our right to bear arms,” its language is “clear, it’s concise, and it stands alone,” and it “should continue to stand the test of time.” During the Republican primary in 2022, Brown criticized the Republican who eventually won the nomination (and lost the election), Adam Laxalt, for his support for “red-flag” laws, proposing that “we’ve got a lot of laws already on the books” and should focus on enforcing those. If elected, Brown has vowed to “always fight to protect the Second Amendment.”
Voters who are looking for a concrete example of the gap between how candidates in pro-Second Amendment states often run for office and how candidates in pro-Second Amendment states often behave in office need look no further than to Pennsylvania, where the incumbent Democrat, Bob Casey Jr., has abandoned everything he once said he believed in on the importance of the Second Amendment. In 2006, when he first ran for the Senate, Casey opposed all new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. Now, he supports universal background checks, “red-flag” laws, the prohibition of “semiautomatic AR-15-style rifles with high-capacity magazines” and more. As The Washington Post noted as long ago as 2016, despite Casey’s having run for his seat as a “‘pro-gun’ candidate, largely in the mold of his late father,” he has since “embraced every major proposal to counter gun violence” that his party has proposed, “including a renewed ban on assault weapons and enhanced background checks before gun purchases.” As is fashionable, Casey describes his views as commonsensical. But this is belied by the fact that the state he represents has passed none of the laws that he wishes to impose on it from Washington, D.C. In truth, it is Casey’s opponent, combat veteran Dave McCormick, who is closer to Pennsylvania’s center of gravity. McCormick describes himself as a “strong supporter of the Second Amendment” who “believes law-abiding citizens have an individual right to own firearms for self-defense, hunting, collecting and sport-shooting, for any lawful reason” and that “neither Congress nor the states can take that away.”
Finally, there are the races in Michigan and Wisconsin, where late primaries have left many of the candidates as yet unresolved. In Wisconsin, the eventual Republican challenger will be running against the Democratic incumbent, Tammy Baldwin, a run-of-the-mill gun-control advocate who has enthusiastically advertised her support for “legislation to expand federal background checks and ban military-style assault weapons,” and who has routinely voted against judges who have vowed to uphold the original meaning of the Second Amendment. In Michigan, the retirement of the incumbent Democrat, Debbie Stabenow, has left the seat completely open, but her likely replacement will be Elissa Slotkin, a member of the House of Representatives who attempted last year to impose a national one-week waiting period on all firearms purchases and transfers; who supports “universal background checks” and an “assault-weapons ban.” She is also a candidate who, per the New Republic, is so focused on the issue that she is “betting her Senate bid on gun control.”
And then there is the House of Representatives, in which all 435 members are up for election this year. The importance of a pro-Second Amendment majority in the lower chamber ought to be self-evident: you will note, for example, that, while the Democrats ran the House between 2019 and 2023, it produced a near-endless supply of stringent gun-control bills, but that, since control flipped after the 2022 election cycle, that threat has virtually disappeared. At present, the Republicans have a majority of 220-212, which, assuming that the status quo were to remain elsewhere, means that the outcome of just four races stand between the American public and a House of Representatives that spends its days trying to limit their right to keep and bear arms. The last two House elections have been extremely close—with plenty of races being decided by less than a percentage point. Often, “every vote counts” sounds like a saccharine slogan. Here, it could not be more relevant.
That obvious matter to one side, there is another reason that this year’s House elections are so critical, and, oddly enough, it has to do with the Senate. Historically, the Senate has acted as a cooling mechanism that prevents temporary passions from being translated into bad law. Because the filibuster has required controversial legislation to obtain 60 out of 100 votes instead of 50, only those ideas that have broad buy-in have made it out of Congress, and, as a result, federal law has remained stable.
In recent years, however, the Democratic Party has becoming increasingly frustrated with the filibuster—to the point at which it has repeatedly tried to abolish it. During the last two Congresses, this attempt failed. But two of the Democratic senators who were instrumental in resisting the change are retiring, which means that, even if the Democrats were to win exactly the same number of Senate seats they currently enjoy, they could plausibly gain a majority that is willing to kill the filibuster simply by changing who sits on their side of the chamber. The optimal way for voters to avoid this scenario is to vote for a majority in the Senate that wishes to protect the filibuster. If, however, that is not possible, the next-best check is to return a pro-Second Amendment majority to the House of Representatives so that the incentive to abolish the filibuster disappears.
Because the defenders of the Second Amendment have made so much progress during the last 30 years, the prospect of a return to the precariousness of the early 1990s can seem remote. But even a brief review of the policy platforms of anti-Second Amendment politicians illustrates how false that feeling truly is.
