Donald Trump
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Anti-gun candidates took a beating in Tuesday night’s election, with Republicans winning not only the presidency but also the U.S. Senate. At the time of this writing, House races in some districts were still too close to call, so declaring a Republican sweep is still premature.

Leading the red wave was former President Donald Trump, who crushed through the “blue wall” and captured 277 Electoral votes at the latest count, compared to just 224 for Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump won nearly all of the swing states, including Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Michigan and Arizona were both still too close to call, but the latest tallies showed Trump leading both by a narrow margin. The latest count also showed Trump ahead of Harris in the popular vote by about 5 million votes.

“I’ll be fighting for you, and with every breath in my body,” Trump told supporters after securing the victory. “I will not rest until we deliver the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve.” 

As TTAG readers are well aware, the presidency was a must-win race after American gun owners suffered the last four years under President Joe Biden’s anti-gun administration. Harris had promised to institute even more gun control schemes, but the loss has likely produced her last time in the political limelight.

Of course, gun-rights organizations, including Gun Owners of America, were elated with Trump’s victory.

“Kamala Harris would have continued weaponizing the power of government against the Second Amendment rights of the people,” GOA Senior Vice President Eric Pratt said in a press release from early this morning, “We’re thrilled to be charting a far different and brighter course with President Trump, who has promised to repeal the Biden-Harris infringements within his first week in office. Rather than going on defense, we’re already preparing to help the Trump Administration repeal gun control and restore Second Amendment rights.” 

In the Senate, Republicans managed to capture at least 52 seats to the Democrat’s current 42, ousting Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a longtime gun-ban proponent, from his leadership role. Several races remained too close to call at  6 a.m. central time, but the Republican candidates held small margins in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Michigan. The Democrats have held the majority in the Senate since 2021.

Big pro-gun wins in the Senate races included a huge victory for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who crushed his opponent, anti-gun Democrat Colin Allred, by more than a million votes. In another key victory, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, in his first run for public office, unseated anti-gun Democrat John Tester in Montana. In a race that the National Rifle Association poured more than $2 million into, Sheehy received 53% of the vote, compared to Tester’s 45.2%.

Trump declared the win an “unprecedented and powerful mandate,” which is a good description of the major victory for Republicans in the Senate and for the presidency. It remains to be seen exactly how effective they will be in pushing forward pro-2A legislation given the current uncertainty in the U.S. House of Representatives elections

With several races for the House still too close to call this morning, it’s currently unclear which party will hold the majority in that body. In one tightly contested race of interest to gun owners, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke narrowly defeated Democrat Monica Tranel.

Zinke is a former Navy SEAL, fifth-generation Montanan and strong 2A supporter. At the other end of the spectrum, Tranel supported so-called “universal” background checks, red-flag laws and closing the “gun show loophole,” another term to describe outlawing private sale of firearms.

Pro-rights groups hope Trump will begin his presidency by immediately rolling back some of the arguably unconstitutional executive actions President Joe Biden put into effect upon taking office. Other immediate top priorities include reining in the Biden-weaponized Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), doing away with Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, pushing forward national concealed carry reciprocity legislation and rolling back anti-gun laws that have plagued American gun owners ability to freely practice their Second Amendment rights.

54 COMMENTS

  1. Well all if this isn’t the 4 year window to make silencers a freedom item or just attack the nfa all together, it’ll never happen.

  2. Disband the ATF.
    Nationwide concealed carry.
    Make automatic weapons available again.
    Turn the Whitehouse office of gun control into the Office of Second Amendment Advocacy.
    No federal or state taxes on firearms and ammunition.
    Tax write offs for training.

    That would be a good start.

    • If your mission is to roll back infringements on fundamental civil liberties, there’s no shortage of issues to address. Personally I’d prioritize freedom of speech and use of federal resources to influence outcomes of elections. But I’ll happily take progress on 2A issues.

  3. 2020 Election —- 156,000,000 Voted
    2024 Election —- 140,000,000 Voted

    Did 16,000,000 folks vote twice in 2020 ?
    Or Stay home in 2024 ?
    DOJ needs to do some looking into.

      • Well, there were 164k “excess” ballots cast in _ichigan that the lawyers caught last week in a single event. Good a place as any to start.

        h ttps://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/10/30/what-the-hell-is-going-on-in-michigan-n4933794

          • Having pro-active teams to address things like this may have made the difference this year. Hopefully that effort will continue going forward to clean up voter rolls and just generally push for more transparency. Seems like it would be a mistake not to move to prevent even more shenanigans or appearance of shenanigans.

    • probably demographics shift accounts for most of it. ~15-20 million voters died during Biden’s administration after he was elected in 2020, but had voted in the 2020 election. Collectively: A combination of causes ranging from tobacco use to disease, and some COVID related, deaths during botched abortions, car accidents, drug overdose (~ half a million just from those alone), medical malpractice, accidental, natural causes, etc…

      • plus… all the ballots are not counted yet so there is probably some in those that have not shown up yet in the counts. Plus, some people probably didn’t bother to vote this time.

        Its a little too early to start pointing out differences in voting numbers between the years. Give it a day.

        But, although the final vote count is not in yet…of the ones counted were enough to put Trump over the top to win the electors votes and thus the Electoral College votes needed for his 277.

    • LOUIS,

      I am finding it hard to believe that Democrats lost 13.8 million votes for President in 2024 versus 2020. That is a 17% loss. And those votes did not appear to go to Trump since his vote count in 2024 is down 2 million votes versus 2020.

      Maybe Political Science analysts will try to say that 2 million Republican voters stayed home and 13.8 million Democrat voters stayed home? (And some number of voters switched Parties.) That is actually believable when I ponder on it for a bit.

  4. “Did 16,000,000 folks vote twice in 2020 ?”

    Very interesting. Maybe some female zombies that have been knee-jerk coting demmunist for decades finally woke up and smelled the garlic? Trying to be nice here.

      • I heard it first as:

        Remember young Dems, ACORN* says vote early, vote often, and honor Grandma’s memory by making sure her vote counts too.

        *now defunct group of community organizers who were busted, disbanded, and just changed the name of their org and kept on rolling with the same people doing the same shady things

  5. Elon Musk is now the number one enemy in the United States. He needs to double his personal guard and be extra cautious.

    • … why? He’s just some guy with a little bit of money exercising his First Amendment Rights, I mean, the other side does the same thing , so no biggie!
      Right, Miner?
      Miner?
      Miner ??

  6. Trump is certainly much much better than the Biden/Harris cabal, but to me he has a long way to go to show gun owners that he is fully on our side. #1 replace the ATF Director, #2 dump the ATF, #3 repeal the 1934 National Firearms Actn , #4 sign national reciprocity, and #5 remove suppressors from the NFAct.

    The GOP needs to man up and get legislation going to get these things passed. This would be novel idea for them.

    • Only one of those can be done from the Oval Office without strong support in Congress (50% plus one in the House and 60 votes in the Senate). They should all be goals to be pursued, but just like Biden overreached with most of his EOs, Trump is bound by the law. He can undo just about anything Biden did with EOs, but not go much further without congressional support.

      The big win is that there are likely to be 2-3 replacements in SCOTUS over the next 4 years. Far better than Harris appointing even one “Didn’t Earn It” to the bench.

    • Only the first of those can be completed without a majority of votes in the House and 60 votes in the Senate. He can gut the ATF, which is should do with most federal agencies to reduce bloat, but he can’t eliminate.

      He can reverse all the Obiden executive orders. The GOP should put forth bills on those items and force Dems to vote on the record.

  7. Gonna be real for a second. Both candidates are horrible people. Having each party pick their respective nominee is indicative we’ve been in a zero-sum game for some time now.

    Both are horrible for different reasons, but they represent different wings to the same authoritarian bird of prey. We lose either way.

    Liberty was doomed from the start this election cycle.

    • In a 2-party system, the vote is nearly always for the least worst candidate. Sad that we’ve come to that, but that is our system. At least one candidate was elected by his primary delegates. Harris never won a primary anything in either of her pesidential runs.

  8. When will Ds get it? Gun control is a losing issue. Imagine how many votes they could have picked up had they embraced gun rights and rejected gun control. Until they figure this out they will keep losing.

    • But who are they going to blame for crime and economic disparity? They need a small but visible scapegoat.

      And they certainly can’t blame one of their supporting demographics.

    • Guns are important. It is why I voted for Orange Man Bad. Even though I’m more of a liberal than a lot of us.

      But this election had a lot to do with the economy. bidenomics was destroying the middle class and wrecking the already poors.

      This election confirmed that the dems are the party of the rich white man.

  9. One can hope, but I don’t think the battle for ballots is over yet. Obama warned that they had plenty of lawyers ready to take anything to court, and I think they will. This won’t be settled until the last of the lawsuits plays out in court. And with the courts, you just never know how they will decide.

    Plus, this is only the beach head. Trump has to get people who are not so much leaders in their own right as top managers. He needs people as secretaries of the various departments who will take his policies and plans and make them their own and carry them out, rather than try to carry out their own ideas of what their department should do. This problem was just one of many which undercut him in his first term. So it’s going to be a slog to find them before the inauguration.

    He faces a bureaucracy that won’t carry out his policies and programs even if the head of their department is fully in agreement with Trump. Those have to either agree and carry out their assignments to the best of their abilities, resign – or be fired. That will have to come down through the Secretaries of the various departments.

    So the war to liberate Festung Washington DC is just beginning.

  10. And awaiting the antifa “mostly peaceful protests” (note plural), if their parents haven’t grounded them already.

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