Bruen establishes an unrestricted right to carry a gun anywhere in the country, bringing firearms to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. If the Supreme Court ruling, expected in mid-2022, on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Although many Democrats might be inclined to demonstrate, a larger percentage of Republican protesters would almost certainly be carrying guns. Capitol and possibly many state capitols, plunging the country into chaos. Such a decision would more likely bring tens of millions of protesters and counter-protesters into the streets, especially around the U.S. Given the growing intensity and polarization of political life, would either side accept a decision that handed a contested 2024 election result to the other? An October CNN poll found that more than three-quarters of Republicans falsely believe Joe Biden's 2020 election win was fraudulent.Īccording to the Constitution, Congress and the Supreme Court are supposed to settle those sorts of dueling claims. Republicans claim, contrary to the evidence, that Democrats have already manipulated vote counts through fraud to steal a presidential election. A PBS NewsHour/ NPR/ Marist poll in early November reported that 55 percent of Democrats saw voter suppression as the biggest threat to U.S. Democrats worry that voter suppression and election interference from Republican state officials will deny millions of Americans their say at the polling booths. Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Gettyīoth Democrats and Republicans are rapidly losing faith in the integrity of U.S. West Ohio Minutemen, an armed militia, stand guard near Public Square during the second day of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 19, 2016. "The idea that people would take up arms against an American election has gone from completely farfetched to something we have to start planning for and preparing for," says University of California, Los Angeles law professor Adam Winkler, an expert on gun policy and constitutional law. That combustible formula raises the threat of armed, large-scale attacks around the 2024 presidential election-attacks that could make the January 6 insurrection look like a toothless stunt by comparison. If historical trends hold, the buyers will be overwhelmingly white, Republican and southern or rural.Īmerica's massive and mostly Republican gun-rights movement dovetails with a growing belief among many Republicans that the federal government is an illegitimate tyranny that must be overthrown by any means necessary. In 2020, 17 million Americans bought 40 million guns and in 2021 were on track to add another 20 million. What Nieznany represents is something else entirely: a much larger and more diffuse movement of more-or-less ordinary people, stoked by misinformation, knitted together by social media and well-armed. Law enforcement has long tracked and often infiltrated these groups. Groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which took part in the January 6th riot at the Capitol and may have played organizational roles, have grown in membership. The phenomenon goes well beyond the growth of militias, which have been a feature of American life at least since the Ku Klux Klan rose to power after the Civil War. He is one of many rank-and-file Republicans who own guns and in recent months have talked openly of the need to take down-by force if necessary-a federal government they see as illegitimate, overreaching and corrosive to American freedom. His political comments on the social-media site Quora received 44,000 views in the first two weeks of November and more than 4 million overall.
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