Gun owners vote in large numbers, but many still fail to register. If all registered and voted, they could strongly influence election outcomes. For example, Arizona, my state: A recent analysis by the organization Women for Gun Rights estimates that 133,094 gun owners in Arizona were not registered to vote in the 2024 election.
“Hudson is not the Wild West,” a mailed political flyer timed to hit my mailbox just days before Tuesday’s election protested. “Gun-slingin’ council members won’t make our neighborhood safer.”
Although the election for at-large seats was officially “non-partisan,” the mailer, with extremely small print admitting “paid for by the Summit County Democratic Party,” was clearly targeting two incumbent Republican-favored politicians. It called them “armed and dangerous, and declared they had “misfired with a Lock ‘N’ LOAD law that could fill Council chambers with gun chambers and leave residents in the crossfire.”
The council members “aren’t shooting straight with us,” the allegations continued, smearing them as “a trigger-happy posse of vigilantes playing politics with public safety.”
By David Codrea

