Let’s be honest. If you own guns or you’re a gun-rights supporter, and if you’re concerned about government restrictions on your Second Amendment rights, the future looks bright. The elevation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court may well represent the death knell for draconian forms of gun control — including bans on so-called “assault weapons” and bans on standard-capacity magazines in semi-automatic pistols and rifles.
Moreover, meaningful federal gun control has been blocked for a generation, and red-state legislatures are moving almost uniformly to liberalize state gun laws. Witness, for example, the steady spread of “constitutional carry” in red states across the land.
But another threat looms, one that can stretch across the entire American landscape, is immune to the filibuster, and is largely sheltered from judicial review. It’s a threat that can choke off financing for the gun industry, stifle speech about guns, and lock the gun-rights community into offline (and small online) ghettos that restrict their ability to communicate.