The national mood after November 3rd 2026 felt like the morning after a bar fight you didn't start but still somehow lost. Voters walked into the booths with grocery receipts in one hand and gas prices in the other, muttering about an Iran war that dragged on long enough to turn "America First" into a punchline, and they walked out having surrendered to Democrats both chambers of Congress. The blue wave wasn't quite the extinction-level event Ron DeSantis called it from Tallahassee, but it was close enough that the GOP spent Wednesday morning inventorying the damage instead of taking a victory lap. DeSantis himself described it as the political equivalent of a meteor strike that went all around the United States, and for once the hyperbole was only mildly exaggerated. Blue states, red states, everything in between got hit. The only place that held the line with any real claim to pride was Florida (and to an extent Tennessee), and even that claim required some creative accounting. There has been a blue shift.
Even Florida—the supposed gold standard of Republican durability—barely held the line. Byron Donalds scraped out a win for governor at roughly 50 percent against David Jolly, a margin so thin it made DeSantis's old 19-point landslides look like ancient history. Over in the Senate race, Ashley Moody edged out DSA-aligned Angie Nixon by about three points. Three points. In Florida. Against a candidate who joined the Democratic Socialists of America and still came within shouting distance of a Senate seat. Nixon carried Miami-Dade and posted numbers that would have been unthinkable two years ago. Miami, where Cubans who endured socialism constantly call everything socialism....
The Free State of Florida stayed red, but the line of scrimmage moved ten to fifteen points toward the Democrats, just as DeSantis himself admitted. That's not a hold. That's a warning shot with the safety features still on. The DSA is now removing the safeties from all their torpedoes. Florida Republicans can congratulate themselves on surviving the night. They cannot pretend the state is immune to the national mood when a progressive state representative from Jacksonville can force a three-point race against an incumbent senator in a state Trump carried by double digits. The Cuban and Venezuelan voters who fled actual socialism still showed up and still rejected the DSA label, but the rest of the state moved enough that the old margins are gone. DeSantis called it holding the line. The rest of the country called it a close call that could have gone the other way if someone sneezed at the wrong moment.
Then there was Texas. The Lone Star State, long the poster child for pro-2A governance, watched Democrat Gina Hinojosa take the governor's mansion from Greg Abbott and James Talarico flip the Senate seat against Ken Paxton. Democrats also seized control of the Texas House for the first time in decades. And in the race that mattered most to the gun community, Katy Padilla Stout defeated Brandon Herrera in TX-23 by roughly 52 to 44. Herrera, the AK Guy, was supposed to be a blowout in a district Trump carried by double digits. Instead, fatigue from Paxton's endless corruption saga—impeachment by his own party, the divorce on "biblical grounds," the Dubai stories with people facing federal fraud charges, the whole tabloid circus—dragged the entire ticket. What looked like a sure Herrera win turned into an eight-point loss. Georgia followed a similar pattern: Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first black woman elected governor anywhere, Ossoff held his Senate seat, and the legislature looks split, with Democrats poised to take the House while Republicans cling to a narrow Senate edge. Pro-2A strongholds didn't just lean blue. Several of them flipped hard. Texas and Georgia were supposed to be the firewall. They turned into cautionary tales about what happens when the top of the ticket is weighed down by personal scandal and national economic pain. Herrera's campaign had the energy, the online following, and the clear 2A message. It still wasn't enough when the statewide environment was poisoned by Paxton's baggage and the national drag from Washington. The voters who should have been automatic for a pro-gun candidate in West Texas decided the rest of the ticket was too much to ignore. FYI this is where a civics lesson can come in handy. You don't necessarily have to fill in a choice for a given item on a ballot. You can write in Mickey Mouse if it suits you.
All is not lost. Not yet. But if you're still treating this as a temporary fever that will break by 2028 without any work on your part, you're volunteering to be the next data point in someone else's autopsy. The map got uglier. The underlying reality of an armed citizenry that treats the Second Amendment as a right rather than a suggestion did not disappear overnight. The question is whether the people who understand that distinction will treat the next two years as a holding action or a surrender.
Where to Lay the Blame
The incumbent party almost always takes a beating in the midterms. That's political physics, not prophecy. But this particular beating had fingerprints all over it, and they belonged to the guy at the top. Trump's decision to draw out the Iran war created an economic drag that no amount of border rhetoric could fully paper over. Gas prices stayed elevated. Grocery bills stayed ugly. And voters who pulled the lever for Trump/Vance in 2024 decided they had seen enough. The war that was sold as a necessary, limited action became a prolonged liability that voters could feel every time they filled up the tank or checked out at the grocery store. The fact that the dollar itself is fatally flawed doesn't help, either.
JD Vance put the post-mortem in writing on X the morning after, and it was more honest than most Republican postmortems ever get. "The reason we lost is the war," he wrote. "The president himself said so last night." He listed the four things a trusted pollster said would bring those 2024 voters back: end the war, focus on cost of living and inflation, put America First, and change the relationship with Israel. Our voters showed up, Vance noted. In Florida the electorate was still several points more Republican than Democratic. The problem was not catastrophic turnout collapse. The problem was that a meaningful chunk of the people who voted for Trump and Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats this time. Trump later called the assessment "largely true" while still defending the war itself. That's the tell. When the Vice President is publicly saying the signature foreign policy choice cost the party both chambers, and the President is nodding along while refusing to change course, you don't have a messaging problem. You have a policy problem that walked into the voting booth wearing a MAGA hat.
Trump stumbled on his own priorities. The war that was supposed to be quick and decisive became a prolonged liability. Immigration enforcement drew criticism for misallocation—high-profile raids that didn't always match the economic pain voters felt at the pump. Vance himself noted openness to changing enforcement priorities toward businesses that hire illegal labor rather than the current approach. While illegal immigration is trespassing writ large, tossing abuela into a van at 3 AM doesn't play well for normies. A raid on a factory is more palatable and does net better returns, to be honest. Endorsements that once moved numbers became liabilities when the guy at the top of the ticket was associated with higher costs and an open-ended conflict. Democrats didn't need a brilliant positive agenda. They just needed the GOP to keep stepping on its own rake. They got their wish. Congress is theirs. Several governorships are theirs. And the setup for the next two years is as wide open as a Texas highway with no traffic. The party that ran on competence and results got hit with the oldest political rule in the book: when people are hurting at the grocery store, abstract arguments about long-term strategy lose to immediate pain. As noted geriatric gun-grabber James Carville says, "It's the economy, stupid". Being principled is easy, but not so easy when a gallon of gas costs $5.00.
A Democrat Congress and a GOP White House
Trump has already said he'll be vetoing things left and right. Expect that. A divided government with an energetic veto pen is not the same as unified Democratic control, and anyone claiming otherwise is either selling panic or selling consulting hours. The practical reality is uglier in a different way: prominent Democrats have already made it clear their primary project is revenge, not governance. Within hours of the results, the tone on X shifted from affordability to lawfare.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari posted that the thank-you to the President would come in January—with subpoenas. Rep. Delia Ramirez asked Noem, Markwayne, Miller, Homan, and Bovino to clear their schedules. Rep. Robert Garcia told Republicans to "LAWYER UP." Sen. Ron Wyden simply posted the word "Subpoenas." Sen. Ed Markey joked about planting new forests for all the paper they'd need. The Oversight Democrats account listed the "Trump crime family", crony corporations, and associates of Jeffrey Epstein as the people who should not have a good morning. This is not subtle. Multiple Democrats had spent the preceding weeks signaling that Elon Musk, DOGE alumni, and Trump-adjacent figures would be high on the investigative list. Noted socialist marketing (wait, why would a socialist need marketing?) hack Scott Galloway threatened Elon with execution. Musk himself had warned that a Democratic sweep risked turning the country into a permanent one-party state through statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, open borders, and court packing. Voters handed them the gavels anyway. Musk spent hundreds of millions and still watched key races slip away. The money did not buy immunity from the national mood.
What does that mean for actual legislation that helps people? Not much. Expect hearings, subpoenas, and performative outrage. Expect gun control bills floated as political tools rather than serious lawmaking. Democrats know Trump will veto anything that reaches his desk, so the point isn't passage. The point is the press release, the fundraising email, and the base activation. A few AWB-style measures or magazine restrictions might get votes in the House. They'll likely die, maybe even in committees. One fringe benefit of 2A promotion has been people in the center arming up, and this could help. The real business of Congress will be the revenge tour. That's not ideal for the country, but for gun owners it's a perverse short-term benefit: when the other side is more interested in settling scores than writing statutes, fewer statutes get written. The legislative calendar fills with investigations instead of negotiated bills. Gridlock is not the same as progress, but it is better than the alternative when the alternative is a unified Democratic government writing new restrictions.
The Supreme Court Is Not Safe
Congress being blue creates a real threat to the Supreme Court, especially if Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito decide they've had enough. Both are in their seventies. Neither has given any public indication of retiring while Trump is in office, but health is not a campaign slogan. If either steps down before 2028, the replacement fight happens with Democrats controlling the Senate. That is not a friendly environment for an originalist who treats the Second Amendment as something other than a suggestion. The confirmation process for a replacement would be ugly, protracted, and almost certainly produce a justice less protective of the individual right to keep and bear arms.
This puts Viramontes v. Cook County (consolidated with Grant v. Higgins) at risk. The case asks whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles in common use. Oral argument is set for December 2, 2026. The lead named petitioner moved to dismiss himself under Rule 46.2, but the case continues with the other petitioners, including the Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition. A decision that affirms the lower courts' bans would be a body blow. A decision that goes the other way would be the most significant Second Amendment win since Bruen. Either outcome depends on the current composition of the Court holding. If Thomas or Alito exit early, the math changes. The lower courts have already split on whether AR-15s are protected arms in common use. This is the vehicle that could resolve it. Losing the current majority before the decision is written would be an own goal of historic proportions.
So let's be clear about priorities. Those two need vitamins, treadmills, and whatever else keeps septuagenarian originalists vertical and voting. Justices Thomas + Alito, name your favorite healthy food and we'll be outside cooking it for you. In all seriousness, every Second Amendment Radical should be treating the health and continued service of the Court's conservative wing as a strategic asset worth protecting. The alternative is a Court that drifts leftward precisely when the most important rifle case in a generation is being decided. You do not get to re-litigate Heller and Bruen from a worse position and expect better results. The window is open. Keeping the justices who understand the text and history in place is part of keeping it open.
The States Are a Mixed Bag—and That's the Point
Where Democrats hold the trifecta, they will throw every piece of garbage they can at the wall. Expect red-flag expansions, waiting periods, "assault weapon" bans, and magazine limits in the states that already lean that direction and now have clean majorities. That's not new. It's just more of the same with better numbers. The states that already treat the Second Amendment as a regulatory problem rather than a right will move faster. The ones that flipped into trifecta status will try to catch up. Some of those bills will pass. Some will get challenged. The courts will be the backstop, which is why the composition of the federal judiciary matters more than ever.
Texas and Georgia are different in a key way, and those differences are why all is not lost. In Texas, Democrats flipped the House and the governor's office, but Republicans still hold the Senate. That chamber can block the worst of what Hinojosa and the new House majority want to do. In Georgia, current returns point to a Democratic House and a Republican Senate. The electorate there has a habit of splitting tickets in ways that frustrate both parties—GOP for state legislative races in some cycles, Democratic for federal or governor in others. It's unpredictable, which means neither side can take the state for granted. Look at the map. Save for urban areas it's redder than Florida. In both states, the legislature does not have the votes to ram through anti-2A bills without serious resistance. That buys gun owners a modicum of a reprieve. It also means the burden falls on gun owners themselves to lean on their remaining GOP legislators and remind them that blocking bad bills is the job.
These two states illustrate the larger point. A blue wave is not the same as a permanent realignment. Where one chamber or the governor's veto pen remains in less hostile hands, the legislative machinery slows down. That's not a victory parade. It's breathing room. Georgia's ticket-splitting habit is particularly instructive. Voters there have shown they will send one party to Washington and another to the statehouse in the same cycle. That unpredictability is a feature for gun owners who live there, not a bug. It means the legislature cannot be written off as a lost cause even when the statewide executive races go the other way.
What This Means for Gun Owners and Second Amendment Radicals
At the federal level and in divided states like Texas and Georgia, the ideal outcome is that no major anti-2A legislation passes. Trump will veto what reaches him. In those state houses, the opposing chamber doesn't have the numbers. Democrats will spend more energy on revenge hearings than on careful statute-writing, and that is, for the moment, a benefit. Even a successful impeachment and removal of Trump changes less operationally than the headlines would suggest. Vance steps in. There is unlikely to be political capital for two successive impeachment-and-removal trials in a single term. A double removal precipitates a crisis unheard of in US history, and to be blunt, after that, all bets are off - the US will collapse.
The executive branch stays in Republican hands either way. The machinery of the federal government does not grind to a halt because the top name on the letterhead changes.
The one real threat that deserves focused attention is the danger of Democrats sneaking a restoration—and increase—of the NFA tax into some must-pass vehicle. Chris Murphy already floated an amendment (SA 4159) that would jack the transfer and making taxes on silencers, short-barreled rifles, and similar items to $4,709 per item, an inflation-adjusted return to the original 1934 prohibitive rate. Other Democrats have proposed restoring the tax to fund Medicare expansions. The $0 tax created by the One Big Beautiful Bill, combined with the August 2026 district court ruling in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF that treated the zeroed tax as removing the constitutional basis for the registration scheme, is what produced the current injunction and ATF's nationwide non-enforcement posture. Restore even a token tax and the foundation of that injunction gets shaky. Dissolution becomes possible. The people who bought silencers and SBRs on a Form 4473 under the current rules could find themselves in a compliance gray zone with no automatic grandfathering. We covered the mechanics of that body blow in detail earlier this year at regularguyguns.com. The link is still live. Read it again if you haven't. The NFA was never a perfect statute. It was a tax scheme that the courts have now treated as constitutionally limited once the tax hit zero. Putting the tax back, especially at a punitive rate, is the cleanest way for opponents to reopen the fight without having to pass a new ban.
Overall, legislative advances on the Second Amendment at the national level are dead for the foreseeable future. Policy wins remain possible in Florida and the remaining red states that still have the political will to move them. Everywhere else, the only reliable advances for a while will come through the courts nullifying laws. Even that path can take a hit if judges retire and are replaced by less 2A-friendly ones. The math is not complicated. When the legislative branch is hostile and the judicial branch is aging, the window for further gains narrows. That does not mean the existing wins disappear. It means the burden of defending them shifts back to the people who care enough to show up.
What Second Amendment Radicals Can Actually Do
In hard blue states, the fight continues the way it has for years: through the courts and the rare friendly legislator who can still force a vote or an amendment. That work is unglamorous and necessary. In states like Texas and Georgia, the immediate job is simpler and more urgent. Contact your 2A-friendly legislators. Remind them, politely and repeatedly, that their duty is to be blockers. Any anti-2A bill that escapes committee is a failure of the people who still hold the gavel in at least one chamber. Make the phone calls. Show up at the district office. Be the constituent they cannot ignore without political cost. The legislators who remain in the GOP-held chambers know the national environment is hostile. They also know that their own voters still expect them to treat the Second Amendment as non-negotiable. Make sure they hear that expectation in person and on the record.
Another mode of defense is local. Reach out to county commissioners and sheriffs and revive the Second Amendment Sanctuary concept—but with teeth. The Kansas Second Amendment Protection Act is the model worth studying. It declares that firearms, accessories, and ammunition manufactured and owned in Kansas and remaining in the state are not subject to federal regulation under the commerce clause, and it prohibits state and local officials from enforcing federal acts that violate the Second Amendment. The statute has not been upheld against every challenge, and federal courts have still convicted people who relied on it alone, but the framework exists. A sanctuary law with actual enforcement language, private rights of action, and penalties for officials who assist in unconstitutional enforcement creates both a constitutional and a practical defense. If the state or the feds get pushy, the county has something on the books that is more than a resolution. Encourage your local officials to look at the Kansas statute and the later Gun Rights Preservation Act proposals and adapt the workable pieces. Irish Democracy starts with people who refuse to treat unjust laws as legitimate. A county that will not assist in their enforcement is one practical expression of that refusal. The point is not to declare independence from the United States. The point is to create friction against the enforcement of laws that treat a constitutional right as a privilege.
None of this is lost if gun owners treat the next two years as a holding action rather than a surrender. Spread the good word of Second Amendment Radicalism. Buy guns. Train with guns. Buy ammo. Make guns. Learn how to 3D print if you haven't already. Buy bitcoin. The technology and the knowledge are already in the wild. Can't stop the signal. Gun rights only die if we let them. There is a long American tradition of peaceable people conducting themselves morally even when the statutes say otherwise—Irish Democracy in the original sense. The armed populace gets repressed only when it consents to the repression. Focus on 2028 and any intervening special elections. The midterms were a setback. They were not the end of the argument. The people who spent the last several years documenting the NFA fights, the ATF overreach, the Flock camera expansions, and the slow grind of state-level restrictions are still here. The same networks that turned a YouTube gun channel into a congressional campaign, that turned a static site into a daily 2A brief, that kept the pressure on when the institutional GOP wanted to move on, are still operational. The electoral setback does not erase the knowledge base or the manufacturing capacity or the cultural shift that made suppressors and short-barreled rifles ordinary tools instead of exotic curiosities. It just means the next gains will be harder and the defense of the existing ones will matter more.
We've been documenting these fights for years at regularguyguns.com, and the conversation continues on X at @regularguyguns. The work with @dianexis and the rest of the crew has always been about making the case in public, with humor sharp enough to cut and facts solid enough to stand on. That doesn't change because the electoral map got uglier. It gets more important. The same energy that built the audience for these deep dives is the energy that keeps the pressure on legislators, local officials, and the broader culture. You do not need permission from Congress to keep training, keep teaching, and keep making the case that an armed citizenry is the last line of defense against every other kind of overreach. The daily briefs, the long-form pieces on the NFA injunction, the tracking of state-level sanctuary efforts, and the constant reminder that the right exists independent of any legislature's permission slip have all been part of the same project. The midterms change the political weather. They do not change the underlying physics of an armed people who refuse to treat their rights as negotiable.
note: I wrote this with the aid of Grok. Let me know what you think. With Grok I can output faster, but it may not seem like "me" as much. Without Grok, you get "me" but slower.
Get Yourself A Gun And Learn It
This is a firearms blog, so we're going to recommend guns. Of course don't forget other things like medical, comms, doing your Area Study, and so on. There's better sources than RGG on those topics, but for firepower, we have you covered.
Ideally you'll at least want either a basic rifle, i.e. an AR-15, or a pistol, i.e. a GLOCK 19, to start. Both are exceedingly common firearms with plenty of accessories, spare parts, training, and support. However, in some restricted areas, both an AR and a GLOCK are hard to get easily, and you may have to settle for a shotgun for quickly arming yourself. It beats a sharp stick. Note, the in-house counsel wants to remind you that we're talking the legal acquisition of guns here. We're still working on abolishing gun control, and we don't want you in jail. Unfortunately you'll have to play ball in this regard. But anyways, here are some basic suggestions for getting armed.
| Firearm | Cost | Buy Now |
|---|---|---|
| Radical Firearms RF00028 AR-15 | $469 | Buy Now! |
| GLOCK 19 Gen6 9mm Pistol | $620 | Buy Now! |
| Mossberg 590 Shotgun | $621 | Buy Now! |
Learn how to make guns, as well.
| 3D Printer | Cost | Buy Now |
|---|---|---|
| Ender Creality 3 V3 SE | $186 | Buy Now! |
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