Colorado Gov. Jared Polis—a potential candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—signed sweeping new gun legislation earlier this month, creating a permit-to-purchase scheme that could cover most modern semiautomatic firearms. While Polis may limit the impact to AR-15s and similar firearms, the measure still places significant new restrictions on some of the most popular guns in America. The permitting process is complex, requiring most people to take a yet-to-be-created 12-hour training course, pay undefined fees, and wait during a processing period.
The law is the latest example of how Democratic Party leaders are reading the current political moment. Polis, who is viewed as a more moderate Democrat, even libertarian in some ways, had opposed previous attempts to outright ban the sale of AR-15s and other firearms. But unlike other issues on which the Democrats have shifted toward the center since Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Democrats haven’t budged on gun policy.
Not only has one of the politicians possibly planning to pursue the middle lane in the 2028 primary embraced the strictest gun-control regime in his state’s history, one of the party’s most aggressive gun-control advocates has recently gained influence. Though the gun-control group he helped create is floundering, David Hogg has more power in the Democratic Party than ever before: In February, he was elected as the youngest Democratic National Committee vice chair in history.
Hogg co-founded March for Our Lives after the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where he was a student, and earned a measure of fame for his often incendiary advocacy for gun control.
“Has it ever occurred to you I don’t give f— if you think banning guns is a bad idea?” he tweeted in January 2022. “The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun isn’t a good guy with a gun- it’s stopping a bad guy like the shooter at my high school from being able to obtain a gun.”
“F— the NRA and especially f— the politicians who say they support gun laws but never do anything after getting elected,” he posted a month later. “Blood is on both your hands.”
Though Hogg has faced stiff opposition in the party during his limited time at the DNC, it hasn’t been over his views on gun policy. Indeed, while congressional Democrats haven’t talked much about gun policy, they have been surprisingly united in opposition to the Republican-backed gun bills piling up in the House and Senate.
Of the five major pro-gun bills introduced thus far, only two have garnered any Democratic support at all. The House versions of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act and Hearing Protection Act have precisely one Democratic co-sponsor each, and the Senate versions don’t have any Democrats on board. The Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act, the Fair Access to Banking Act, and the Firearm Industry Nondiscrimination Act haven’t found any Democratic support. Not only that, but on Wednesday Sen. Adam Schiff announced he was introducing an assault weapons ban bill.
That’s a stark contrast to how Democrats handled immigration and border security, areas where the latest Fox News poll finds Trump has the most support—with border security being the only issue he still enjoys more support than opposition.
The way the Laken Riley Act played out in Congress is a clear example. The Republican-backed bill, which requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain illegal immigrants arrested for serious crimes, saw robust Democratic support: Twelve Democratic senators and 48 representatives voted for the bill, which Trump signed into law at the end of January.
Trump’s extremely aggressive approach to the start of his second term, with little regard for getting Democrats on board, has changed the political dynamic since then. Trump’s approval rating has collapsed to historic lows for this point in a president’s term, and his administration’s forceful tactics have led to widespread backlash in the courts and even on the streets. That backlash has been especially strong among the Democratic base.
So, just as Trump has moved at blinding speed to try to implement his agenda, Democrats have moved quickly from trying to triangulate policies after an election loss to presenting themselves as the antithesis of the president. That transition has happened so fast that the party never really got to the point of debating its gun stances.
Surprisingly, the issue Trump polls best on outside of immigration or border security is guns, with 41 percent approving of his handling of gun policy in the Fox poll. That could be due to the fact that guns have proven to be a low-priority issue for Trump to this point, with few headline-grabbing moves or adversarial court cases to speak of 100 days in. But many Americans, who generally hold deeply polarized views on guns like they do with most other things, also just like his more pro-gun approach.
Of course, 44 percent also disapprove of how he’s handled guns, putting him 3 points underwater on the issue. And his overall approval rating is 11 points underwater—something many other polls are showing now as well. So, there’s little reason for Democrats to reconsider things at the moment, based on those numbers at least.
Trump hasn’t shifted his views on guns yet either. While that remains an underrated possibility, the most likely future as of today is one where the two parties, like the Americans they represent, remain deeply at odds on how they think we should regulate weapons. The 2024 election seems to have failed to shift the political dynamics around firearms all that much.
