Thune’s Election as Senate Majority Leader Good News for Gun Owners

Senate Republicans selected South Dakota’s John Thune as their new leader on Wednesday, easing the concerns of some Second Amendment advocates who’d expressed reservations about the other two candidates in the mix for the job. 

As my colleague Tom Knighton wrote earlier today, the other candidates vying for the position left vacant after Mitch McConnell announced he’d be stepping down as the GOP leader in the Senate have some black marks in their background when it comes to Second Amendment issues. 

It would be unfair to label either Texas Sen. John Cornyn or Rick Scott as full-blown gun-grabbers, but Cornyn was one of the prime sponsors and dealmakers behind the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that was signed into law by Joe Biden two years ago. 

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act might not have been the worst gun control law possible, but Republicans had enough of the Senate that they didn’t have to just accept less gun control. They could easily have held their ground and not passed a thing. It was Cornyn who spearheaded the effort on the Republican side, and no, I’m not remotely ready to forgive him.

Which brings us to Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. That’s Trump’s pick for majority leader, and Florida is another state that tends to be pretty good on guns…so long as you don’t want to open carry them. Clearly, Scott is a solid choice on guns, too, right?

Not really. Scott was the governor of Florida when the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took place, and he was instrumental in the adoption of bills raising the age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21, imposing a three-day waiting period on gun transfers, and establishing a “red flag” law. Scott even penned an op-ed for the Washington Post in 2019 backing a federal “red flag” statute, declaring that “properly constructed, the extreme risk protection order, as it’s known, is a common-sense public safety measure.”

Thune, on the other hand, doesn’t really come with any gun control baggage. He’s been a reliable supporter of pro-Second Amendment legislation and has sponsored bills of his own, while voting against “assault weapon” bans and the BSCA in 2022. 

In fact, back in 2009, Thune offered an amendment to a Defense appropriations bill that would have established a national right-to-carry reciprocity law. 

The measure, if passed, would force other states to recognize and allow other states’ concealed carry permits, which can sometimes have more lax standards and requirements.

“I believe that a state’s border should not be a limit on this fundamental right,” Thune told the Salt Lake Tribune, “and that law-abiding individuals should be guaranteed their Second Amendment rights without complication as they travel throughout the 48 states that currently permit some form of conceal and carry.”

Thune had offered plain legislation to expand concealed carry laws and had received 22 cosponsors, though the legislation appeared to go nowhere.

With the filibuster in place, Republicans are unlikely to get the 60 votes necessary to pass right-to-carry reciprocity as a standalone bill. Appropriation bills, however, can clear the Senate with a simple majority. The fact that Thune has previously embraced using a budget bill as a vehicle to advance the right to keep and bear arms isn’t a guarantee that he’ll do so in the future, but it’s still reason for gun owners and Second Amendment supports to be optimistic about making real progress in securing and strengthening our Second Amendment rights in the new year.