With President Donald J. Trump’s (R) landslide reelection taking the headlines—as it should—it was easy for much of the country to overlook the page-two news that Los Angeles voters tossed out County District Attorney George Gascón (D).
Gascón lost by about a half-million votes. His “restorative justice” model of reducing sentences, no-cash bail and a refusal to prosecute many criminals unsurprisingly paralleled a rise in violent crime. He soon faced a recall effort that was backed by many of the nearly 1,000 prosecutors underneath him. It, and a subsequent recall effort, failed, as meeting the signature threshold in California is difficult.
As he was letting violent criminals walk, Gascón praised Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) effort to burden law-abiding citizens with yet more gun-control laws. Gascón’s coldness toward victims of these criminals was emulated by other George Soros-backed district attorneys around the country. He never did take responsibility for what his policies wrought; in fact, after voters tossed him out of office, he said, “The rightward shift across America last night is heartbreaking. Democrats have a long road ahead, but the work is more vital than ever and our commitment will not waver.” Gascón said this as if his years of setting violent criminals free—some of whom quickly murdered others, including police officers—while he backed the most-stringent gun-control restrictions on lawful gun owners did not have anything to do with his ouster.
Gascón was the poster boy for elected officials who opt to go soft on actual criminals while blaming law-abiding citizens for rising crime rates. That he lost in Los Angeles shows this was a law-and-order election. It was an election in which a majority of voters nationwide, including millions of NRA members, stood up for their freedom.
When Trump’s victory became clear, many in the legacy media began digging up quotes to make Trump sound extreme, including this one from the 2024 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits: “At noon on Inauguration Day, we will sack the anti-gun fanatic Steve Dettelbach,” Trump told NRA members last May. “Have you ever heard of him? He’s a disaster.”
The legacy media spin on this was that Trump was politicizing a federal law-enforcement agency. But the opposite is true. President Joe Biden (D) hyper-politicized the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) when he nominated a gun-control advocate to head the bureau. Dettelbach went on to focus the ATF’s resources on putting gun stores out of business for paperwork errors. He also attempted to write gun-control law—a maneuver to bypass Congress’ constitutional authority—instead of focusing on stopping or catching the actual criminals in society.
With the reelection of Trump, this is just one thing that will change, as Trump has promised to refocus federal agencies on protecting and serving the American people, not on attempting to write or pass new laws to further control law-abiding citizens.
Indeed, the policy differences between Trump and Kamala Harris (D) could not have been starker. “Let there be no doubt, the survival of our Second Amendment is very much on the ballot. You know what they want to do ... . The Second Amendment … is under siege. But with me, they’d never get anywhere. We need the [Second Amendment] for safety. Because you know the bad guys are not giving up their guns,” said Trump at the 2024 NRA Leadership Forum in Dallas, Texas.
During the first Trump term, he nominated U.S. Supreme Court justices who have records of interpreting the U.S. Constitution as it was originally written. These nominations were crucial in the Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which affirmed that our Second Amendment rights do not cease to exist once we leave our homes. Trump also nominated numerous judges for lower courts, including 54 appellate judges and 174 district court judges.
One thing that didn’t happen under Trump’s watch was the passage of any new, radical gun-control bills that would further infringe upon Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
This is why Doug Hamlin, NRA executive vice president and CEO, said just after the election: “NRA members’ and gun owners’ votes returned this patriotic American to the White House. He has stood with us, spoken face-to-face with record numbers of NRA members at our Annual Meetings & Exhibits, and he has defended the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. We congratulate our 45th—and soon to be 47th—President of the United States, NRA Life Member Donald J. Trump.”
The former and now-future president will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025.
U. S. Senate
Not only was Trump chosen to return to the White House with running mate J.D. Vance—both staunch defenders of our constitutional rights—but pro-freedom candidates endorsed by the NRA were elected across the nation.
Prior to the election, Democrats held a majority in the U.S. Senate by a margin of 51-49, counting independent Sens. Angus King (Maine), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) amongst their ranks. Voters completely shifted the balance of power in the opposite direction by electing pro-freedom candidates. Each of the winning candidates below was endorsed by the NRA Political Victory Fund (PVF) as every one of them understands the fundamental need to defend our constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Montana
Tim Sheehy (R) soundly defeated three-term incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D). Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL officer, pledged his unwavering support for the Second Amendment. “As a Navy SEAL who fought for our country and to protect our freedoms, this is a fundamental constitutional right that must and will always be protected under my watch,” reads an excerpt from Sheehy’s campaign website.
In contrast, Tester claimed to support the Second Amendment, but his actions painted an entirely different picture. He voted to impose “universal” background checks and was in favor of the dubiously named Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, all while refusing to confirm any of Trump’s three nominees to the United States Supreme Court.
Ohio
Bernie Moreno (R) ousted another three-term incumbent in Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), who has been in Congress for more than three decades. Throughout his tenure, Brown has been a reliable vote for all sorts of anti-gun legislation and picked up numerous endorsements from gun-control groups. Much like Tester, he voted for every piece of gun-control legislation that came across his desk and against every pro-Second Amendment judge he was asked to consider.
Moreno, on the other hand, pledged to “vigorously defend our constitutional rights, especially the Second Amendment.”
Pennsylvania
Just to the east, Dave McCormick (R) appeared to be victorious over Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D) as we went to print. Casey, yet another three-term incumbent, might have once been considered a moderate on the Second Amendment, but his tenure has been marked by a notable slide away from defending Americans’ freedom. For over a decade, Casey has routinely voted for, as well as introduced, anti-gun legislation, including a new ban on semi-automatic firearms.
McCormick, meanwhile, 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.”
West Virginia
In the Mountain State, Sen. Joe Manchin (I), a Democrat until just last year, opted to retire and leave his seat vacant. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) comfortably won the election, garnering over two-thirds of the vote. As a two-term governor, Justice signed into law numerous bills that protect and expand the rights of law-abiding gun owners, including campus carry, protection of gun rights during a declared state of emergency and easing the impediments to law-abiding gun owners who are crossing state lines into West Virginia to lawfully carry firearms for self-defense.
His opponent, Glenn Elliott (D), made no mention of the Second Amendment throughout his campaign website, once again illustrating why Gov. Justice was the clear choice for freedom.
Beyond the ballot box, law-abiding Americans have also been voting with their wallets at what can only be described as an astounding rate. For 63 months straight, more than one million background checks have been conducted for the sale of a firearm, with 1.3 million being conducted in October of last year, according to data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
After four years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Americans made it abundantly clear that they do not support the anti-freedom policies that were foisted upon them. Instead, they have chosen to endorse freedom and have done so loudly. These results lay the groundwork for freedom to flourish in President Donald Trump’s second term. second term.
