When the Supreme Court extended the individual right to own a gun Monday, it handed Second Amendment advocates — many of whom are at home in the GOP — one of their most significant legal victories ever.
But who won the day in politics? The Democrats.
For them, the court’s groundbreaking decision couldn’t have been more beneficial to the cause in November. Now, Democratic candidates across the map figure they have one less issue to worry about on the campaign trail. And they won’t have to defend Republican attacks over gun rights and an angry, energized base of gun owners.
“It removes guns as a political issue because everyone now agrees that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and everybody agrees that it’s subject to regulation,” said Lanae Erickson, deputy director of the culture program at centrist think tank Third Way.
A House Democratic aide agreed that the court’s decision removed a potentially combustible element from the mix.
“The Supreme Court ruled here that you have a fundamental right to own and bear arms, and that means at the national level it’s harder — whether it’s Republicans or whether it’s the [National Rifle Association] — to throw that claim out: If Democrats are in charge. they’re going to come get your guns,” said the aide. “It pretty much took that off the table.”
The likely removal — or at least neutralization — of the gun issue this fall is of no small matter in the battle for the House and Senate. The Democratic majorities in both chambers were built, in part, on victories in pro-gun states and districts that had until recently been difficult terrain for Democratic candidates as a result of the national party’s position on gun control.
The chorus of responses to Monday’s ruling was a group of normally dissonant voices: It proved the rare occasion when both former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could find common ground.
In a Facebook post titled “Another Victory for the Second Amendment,” Palin wrote that the case “should leave little doubt that our individual right to keep and bear arms applies everywhere and is a right for everyone.”
Reid essentially agreed, calling the right to bear arms “one of the essential freedoms on which our country was founded.”
“I am pleased that the high court has taken steps in both the Heller and McDonald cases to guarantee this fundamental right,” he said in a prepared statement, referring to both the 2008 Heller decision, which struck down the District of Columbia’s restrictive gun law, and Monday’s McDonald v. Chicago decision against Chicago’s handgun ban.
For congressional Democrats — especially those in seats outside major metropolitan areas where support for gun rights runs high — the ruling offered a chance to assert their pro-gun bona fides.
