A fanatic,” wrote Winston Churchill, “is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” By this measure, how else might one describe the contemporary American gun-control movement, which, despite profound changes in the American political scene and the mountain of evidence that has been arrayed against its claims, has managed to maintain precisely the same set of talking points for more than 50 years in a row?
Perhaps the most stubborn talking point of all is the persistent, if thoroughly absurd, claim that the American public is clamoring for stricter gun control, but that it is perpetually thwarted in that endeavor by the “elites.”
In fact, the opposite is true.
For decades, the defense of the Second Amendment has been a grassroots enterprise, while attempts to render it a dead letter have been mostly the preserve of a small group of very wealthy and connected elitists.
In 2008, just before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in D.C. v. Heller, this dichotomy was on full display. Ahead of that ruling, almost every newspaper in the country insisted that it was patently ridiculous to believe that the phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” meant, in fact, that the people enjoy a right to keep and bear arms. And yet the public—despite being deeply divided on a whole range of other political questions—emphatically disagreed. Per a Gallup poll taken at the time, 80% of voters understood that the Second Amendment protected an individual right. How’s that for a clear example of “We the People”?
This ought not to have been surprising, as the right to keep and bear arms has been a populist staple since before the time of the Founding. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison observed matter-of-factly that, back in Europe—including, to some extent, in Britain—“the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” But, as he made clear, America was to be different.
Since then, alas, not all governments in this country have heeded his instruction. But the people have largely held fast to their freedom. It is undoubtedly the case that the inclusion of the Second Amendment within the U.S. Bill of Rights has helped to protect the right to keep and bear arms in ways that would not be possible in other nations. But, ultimately, the strongest protection has been the citizenry itself, which, unlike those of Britain, Australia, Canada and most of Europe, has sedulously refused to relinquish its guns. Time and time again, voters have been subjected to a full-court press staged by high-profile figures within the media, academia, Hollywood and the political class, and time and time again, those voters have simply refused to acquiesce.
And why would they? As a matter of elementary democracy, it would make little sense for an electorate that merely loans its authority to the government to allow that government to permanently disarm it. But, even if that were of no concern, the sheer physical size of the United States renders gun control a presumptive dead letter. Simply put, there is no way that the average American could realistically outsource his security to the state—even if, for some strange reason, he earnestly wanted to do so.
There are, of course, certain people among us who have the power, influence and resources to surround themselves with armed guards. But, by definition, those people are outliers—a minority within a minority within a minority. Mathematically, it is thus inevitable that the United States will play host to two unevenly sized groups: In one, there will be the handful of citizens who can plausibly inoculate themselves against threats without having to own or carry their own guns; and, in the other, there will be everyone else. As with the First Amendment, it is those who worry least about losing their own rights who tend to be the most willing to give them up.
This refusal continues to confound the country’s leading anti-gun voices. But, remarkably enough, this bewilderment has done nothing to persuade them to abandon the assumptions that underpin their demands. Peruse any tirade against the private ownership of firearms in the United States and you will see all manner of ostensibly democratic terms—“common sense,” “public safety,” “stronger together”—that, if they were to be taken at face value, would imply the existence of a mass movement against the Second Amendment. And yet, happily, no such mass movement ever materializes.
Consider the most-dramatic shift in America’s firearms law in recent years: the incredible growth of constitutional carry. In 2002, only one state, Vermont, had what we now call “constitutional carry.” As this is being written, 29 states had adopted the system. And, to this day, not one of those states—not one!—has so much as held a hearing to discuss repealing or paring back its changes. Nor, for that matter, has there been a single documented case of a governor or lawmaker losing his seat over the policy. Rather, the pattern has always been the same: First, constitutional carry is proposed; next, its opponents call it “extreme” and predict that it will lead to electoral disaster; and, finally ... nothing happens, and everyone who was involved in the project is reelected.
At the federal level, the story is the same. Naturally, not every presidential election is fought over the issue of gun control. But, when the topic has been prominently raised, as it was in 1988 by Michael Dukakis, in 2000 by Al Gore, in 2016 by Hillary Clinton and in 2024 by Kamala Harris, the results have spoken for themselves. In 2012, during his successful reelection campaign, Barack Obama benefited from his decision to remain quiet about the issue. When, during the 2014 midterms, he dramatically changed his tune, he and his party were given a shellacking.
Gun-control groups are not large grassroots groups because people largely want to keep their freedom.
There is a lesson there, for those willing to hear it. As a matter of cynical habit, the press likes to cast gun owners as marginal figures in American society, and even to suggest that they are slowly going extinct. But this was never true—and it’s even less true now than it ever was. Not only are there more firearms in America than people, but the coalition that is buying them is steadily growing more diverse. Between 2019 and 2021, women accounted for around half of all new gun purchases, while, over the same period, purchases by blacks increased by nearly 60%. Since the 1990s, firearms purchases are also up substantially among Hispanics and Asian-Americans. Indeed, between 2020 and 2023, approximately 26.2 million Americans—that’s individuals, not households—bought a gun for the first time. Evidently, the citizens of the United States did not get the mainstream media’s memo.
When advancing their arguments, the champions of harsher gun control like to pretend that the mere possession of a firearm is liable to turn anyone into a public nuisance. But this, quite obviously, is ludicrous. The vast majority of Americans do not fear their neighbors, or their friends, or their parents or themselves; they fear the small number of pariahs who willfully scoff at the law. When they imagine using a firearm, they imagine using it in self-defense, not to create mischief or chaos. As such, they understand intuitively that there is little to be gained from them denying themselves their rights, because they are not the problem in the first instance. For this reason, mawkish calls for self-sacrifice ineluctably fall on deaf ears. The solution being presented is self-evidently no solution at all, and, in consequence, the public has no desire to pursue it.
This dynamic has tangible political effects. Typically, America’s gun-control organizations are run from the top down, with the bulk of their funding coming from rich activists such as Michael Bloomberg and Ron Conway or from government sources such as the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Program, the New York State Office of Gun Violence Prevention and various federal agencies. Despite its folksy name, Everytown for Gun Safety is primarily funded by one person, Michael Bloomberg, while the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence is disproportionately supported by major donors and Left-wing foundations. By contrast, the political activity of pro-Second Amendment campaigners tends to be distributed across the country, while institutions such as the NRA are funded by membership dues and small-dollar donations, as well as by volunteers who willingly donate their time. In this respect, the two sides of the issue neatly reflect the ideas that motivate them. The anti-gun side is centralized, disciplinarian and heavily reliant upon the beneficence of a handful of powerful figures. The pro-gun side is dispersed, individualistic and representative of a genuine civic sensibility.
One sees the fruits of this difference when one compares protests and rallies organized by anti-gun organizations to protests and rallies organized by advocates of the right to keep and bear arms. Anti-gun protests are notable for the uniformity of the participants, who tend to wear the same clothes, wave the same signs and banners and shout the same slogans.
Pro-gun protesters are a less complaisant bunch. Certainly, they may have the same goals as their allies. But, because they have not been carefully coordinated by a middleman, they are unlikely to look as if they had been bought and assembled from an Ikea a few minutes before the start of the event. It is an ongoing problem for the American gun-control movement that, when pushed, its advocates do not know anything about the topic at hand. But, all things considered, their ignorance should not be surprising. Grassroots movements are full of motivated individuals who have formed their own opinions and shown up of their own volition. Astroturfed outfits are full of fair-weather figures who are following other people’s passions. From time to time, one hears critics of the Second Amendment wonder aloud why their campaign has failed to grow in size or passion. The answer ought to be obvious: Because it’s not a grassroots movement.
None of this is to suggest that the right to keep and bear arms faces no sincere threats. As I write, a group of Democrats in Congress is trying to ban semi-automatic firearms, the state of Colorado has passed a flagrantly unconstitutional permit-to-purchase law and the Ninth Circuit has blessed an illegal California law that limits the size of magazines to 10 rounds. If they got the chance, those same people who saw fit to argue in 2008 that the Second Amendment represented no check against Draconian gun control would hollow out the right without so much as a second thought. But, despite their protestations, they will not do so as representatives of the American mainstream, because a majority of the American mainstream is not interested in what they are selling—and, to its immense credit, it never has been.
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