While Republicans have been more than a bit of a letdown on guns here in 2025, there's no disputing the fact that they're still better on the Second Amendment than Democrats. The left hates the right to keep and bear arms.
However, a recent editorial makes a case that might, at least hypothetically, wake some on the left up.
It does it not by making constitutional arguments, which will never work on those who think the Constitution is a roadblock, not a guideline. Now, it does it by leaning into the left's demonization of President Donald Trump.
The argument has always been there — that an armed populace is a hedge against an oppressive regime that ignores due process and confines perceived enemies of the state.
But that’s largely been dismissed as a fringe view — a hypothetical advanced by “gun nuts” and paranoid sovereign-citizen types to give cover to the loosest gun restrictions possible.
Suddenly, the shoe may be on the other foot. The Second Amendment’s origin story has taken on new relevance with the Trump administration “actively looking” at suspending habeas corpus.
...More sinister is the idea that once a fundamental civil liberty is rolled back for one group, any other group is vulnerable. When a safeguard of arbitrary power is diminished, the chances of unlawful imprisonment expands. That’s a legitimate concern amid Trump’s stated desire for retribution.
“Suspending habeas corpus,” noted The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki, “would suspend the right for everyone, not just for undocumented people. So what Stephen Miller is saying here is that Trump is thinking about asserting the right to throw Americans in prison while giving them no opportunity to use the courts to get out.”
Enter the right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment exists not only to protect oneself and one’s property rights, but to resist any government that might attempt to infringe on one’s rights.
Now, I'm not a huge fan of the idea of suspending habeas corpus as a general thing. There might be a time when that's necessary, but I just don't think we're quite there.
I also don't think the Trump administration is going to do it. A lot of things get said and talked about, but little actually happens along those lines. It's just enough to keep the left riled up.
Yet they believe the worst of the Trump administration, while at the same time seeking to disarm the American population--including themselves, mind you--while screaming to the top of their lungs how Trump wants to become a dictator.
Since 2016, I've been screaming at the top of my lungs that if the left really believed that, they'd be buying guns and learning how to use them. Instead, they simply kept pushing for gun control. There were exceptions, to be sure, but for the most part, they still are pushing this idea that we must disarm the populace, particularly of guns they claim are made for the battlefield, even as they dismiss the argument that these guns are used to oppose tyranny.
With this particular argument, though, it may finally wake some of them up to the fact that if we're as authoritarian as they seem to believe--a rich proposition for people who want to regulate free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms, of course, but that's how they see it--then maybe having the means to resist would be a good idea.
Then again, if they were capable of rational thought, they wouldn't be leftists.
