Will the 2011 Senate be friendlier to the Second Amendment than the current Senate? While the 2010 election will result in gains for Republicans, both parties contain pro-rights and anti-rights candidates. In 2006 and 2008, this meant that the anti-Republican deluge did little harm to the net numbers of Second Amendment supporters in Congress.

While some conservatives wish that the NRA would not support pro-gun Democrats, the long-term survival of the right to keep and bear arms depends on gun rights having friends in both major parties. We saw what happened during the George H.W. Bush administration, when the White House believed that gun owners had nowhere else to go, and so Republicans could triangulate to support some anti-gun laws.