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The problem for Trump, of course, is that the Second Amendment doesn't lay things out in quite that way. Reasonable people can disagree about the meaning of "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...," but whatever the interpretation of that clause is, it applies to everyone equally. And since Supreme Court jurisprudence, particularly from the current SCOTUS, has made clear that "A well regulated Militia" means "pretty much everyone," then the current state of play is that nearly any adult in the U.S. who wants a gun, and follows the local laws, can have one.

In their desperate attempts to make Alex Pretti responsible for his own homicide (see above), Trump and MAGA have tried to push a line along the lines of "if you're carrying a gun in the presence of police, you're asking for it." The NRA and other gun groups, to their credit, instantly pushed back against this. These groups may be rather fanatical, and most of them may be thinly veiled fronts for the gun industry, but at least they are not hypocrites. And the fact that MAGA and the NRA are on different sides here has given us one of the more interesting and unexpected squabbles in recent political history.

And if that's not weird and unexpected enough, Second Amendment advocates find themselves with a new source of reinforcements these days: liberals. There have always been left-leaning gun groups, groups that exist to serve folks who want guns for the most common reasons (hunting, self-defense, etc.) and who happen to be politically liberal, or groups that exist to help make sure that vulnerable people (e.g., LGBTQ+) are armed as an insurance policy. At the moment, and in response to the violence in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and other cities, left-leaning gun groups like L.A. Progressive Shooters (left-wing Angelenos), Pink Pistols Twin Cities (gay Minnesotans), Grassroots Defense (liberal Iowans), the National African American Gun Association (Black people) and the John Brown Gun Club (anti-fascists/anti-racists) are seeing a massive surge in interest.

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The linked article contains interviews with the leaders of some of these groups, who offer all-purpose explanations for what's going on. For example, the fellow who created the National African American Gun Association says, "People join when certain people get in office, because it scares them. People join when they see these shootings across the country, and it seems like it's just madness starting to grow more and more."

That may be partly on target, but it goes beyond that, we think. First of all, it's been well established in the scientific literature that conservatives tend to be more fearful than liberals. So, "gun sales surge in response to the election of Barack Obama"? OK, that tracks. But "gun sales surge in response to the election of Donald Trump"? It works less well and, in fact, it didn't happen. The visible increase in left-wing gun ownership, and left-wing interest in gun ownership, did not come with the first or second swearings-in of Trump (or, for that matter, after the first or second swearings-in of George W. Bush). It came after ICE was deployed as the President's personal stormtroopers.