The numbers are shifting and nobody on the right wants to talk about it

I'm going to sound like the person I used to make fun of, which is weird. But yeah—this tracks with my own head pretty closely, and I'm still sorting through what that means.

I bought my first gun in 2020, pandemic paranoia, all that. Came at it from a place of feeling completely let down by institutions I'd trusted. And I remember being shocked at how much *sense* the self-reliance argument made once I actually listened instead of dismissing it as bumper sticker talk.

What I'm still figuring out, though: I'm not sure how much of what the OP is describing is genuine coalition-building versus just people arriving at the same practical decision for totally separate reasons. Like, I vote blue. I'll probably always vote blue. But that doesn't mean I suddenly think the Democratic approach to gun policy has been smart—I think it's been paternalistic and often ignorant.

My question back: does the conversation actually improve if a bunch of formerly anti-gun progressives just... become gun owners while keeping all their other assumptions intact? Or does someone actually have to reckon with *why* the institutional distrust runs both directions?

I'm not being rhetorical. I genuinely don't know. I feel like I'm one person, and I changed my mind, but I also don't know if that's replicable or if it just means I was always a bad progressive.

The part that worries me most is probably what the OP said: whether the right is actually ready to make the self-reliance argument to people who don't look like the historical gun owner. Because if they're not, that coalition falls apart fast.

I think you're asking the right question, but I'd separate two different concerns.

First: does someone have to *reckon* with institutional distrust running both directions? Legally speaking, no. The right is enumerated. Heller established it applies to the states. Bruen said the government has to justify restrictions through text, history, and tradition—not policy preferences. That framework doesn't care whether a new gun owner votes blue or has reconsidered their prior assumptions. The constitutional protection stands regardless.

But politically and culturally—that's where your worry has teeth. You're right that arriving at the same practical decision for separate reasons isn't automatically a coalition. It's just... convergence.

Here's what I'm cautiously optimistic about: Bruen actually *does* change the conversation in a way that might force some reckoning. When courts start asking "was this common in 1791 or 1868?" they're no longer asking "is this policy smart?" They're asking a historical question that applies the same way regardless of who's asking it. That's not small. It means a single mother in Brooklyn and a rancher in Montana are operating under the same legal framework now. They both get to *claim* the text without asking permission from the cultural gatekeepers.

Whether the institutional right extends a genuine welcome? Separate question. But the legal ground is already more level than it was in 2020. That matters for coalitions in ways that transcend personal reckonings.

I appreciate the honesty here, and I mean that. But I need to be direct about what I think gets glossed over in the optimism about "legal ground being more level."

Bruen didn't change what the ground actually *is*—it just changed how courts justify standing on it. You still need a permit in most places. You still submit to a background check. You still can't carry in the places the government decides you can't. The framework shifted from "policy" to "history and tradition," but the permission structure didn't vanish. It just has to wear a different costume now.

Here's the thing that matters for coalition-building: a single mother in Brooklyn and a rancher in Montana aren't operating under the same framework if one of them has to ask the state's permission slip and the other doesn't. And most of them still have to ask.

I'm not trying to be difficult. I get that Bruen is better than what came before. But the OP and @convert.2020 are asking whether this actually builds something durable, and I think the answer depends on whether new gun owners start asking *why* they're filling out forms at all. Do they start pushing back on the permission structure itself, or do they just accept that they need to navigate it smarter than the old guard did?

If it's the latter—if the coalition is just more people accepting licensing and background checks because they've been convinced those are reasonable—then we haven't built anything. We've just expanded who gets to participate in the same system. That's not a political realignment. That's assimilation.

The self-reliance argument only means something if people start actually acting on it.

@voluntaryist, I hear what you're saying, and I get why the permission structure feels like half-measures. But I think you're asking for ideological purity at the exact moment we should be asking for durability.

Here's the assumption I want to name before I push back: you're treating "accepts licensing and background checks" like it's a moral failure instead of a practical negotiation. I don't think it is. The single mother in Brooklyn isn't going to become a constitutional absolutist the second she realizes forms exist. She's going to decide whether carrying a gun makes her safer, and whether the process is worth it to her. Most people who are newly armed aren't running through a political philosophy—they're running through their actual lives.

That's not assimilation into a bad system. That's people making peace with reality while the legal ground shifts underneath.

What @constitutional said about Bruen mattering matters: courts asking "what was common in 1868" instead of "is this policy I like" opens space that didn't exist before. That's not a costume change on permission structures—that's the beginning of a different conversation about what "reasonable" actually means. And I'd rather have new gun owners participating in *that* conversation, messily and incrementally, than waiting for them to reject the entire architecture first.

The coalition gets durable when it's broad enough that no single priority—not constitutional purity, not Democratic approval—can collapse it. That happens when working-class people across the spectrum just... own guns and stop asking permission culturally. The legal fights follow that, not the other way around.