Sen. Mitch McConnell fought off plenty of gun control proposals during his time in the Senate, but he’s decided he has no interest in resuming his role as majority leader this time around. That’s certainly fair.

That means it’s time for new blood, and three people have thrown their hats in the ring for the leadership role. Alarmingly, there seems to be a push to pick a new majority leader before there actually is a majority. Senate Republicans want a new leader in place when Congress returns to session in January, but there are still new Republican senators who aren’t part of the Senate just yet. That bothers me.

What bothers me more are some of our choices.

See, guns are going to be an important issue, and most of the guys being talked about aren’t exactly what I’d call strong Second Amendment supporters.

Let’s start with Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

Being from Texas, one would assume he was good on guns. Guess again.

Cornyn said in order to “Make America Great Again, we must Make the Senate Work Again.” This involves “reinvesting in a Senate committee process to drive an aggressive legislative agenda that secures our border, reduces federal spending, boosts our economy, unleashes the nation’s energy potential, and reverses Biden-Harris policies,” he said.

Cornyn’s letter was sent as conservatives in Texas called on Senate Republicans to reject him. Many Texas Republicans have blasted Cornyn after he joined Democrats to author a gun-control bill and supported a failed border bill that critics say would not have secured the border, The Center Square reported.

After President Joe Biden signed Cornyn’s gun control bill into law, Republican delegates stood, booed, jeered and shouted at him at the 2022 Republican Party of Texas Convention in Houston. Gun rights groups also demanded he apologize for referring to them as an angry mob, The Center Square reported. He has yet to do so.

Biden cited Cornyn’s gun control bill as the authorization needed to push through gun restrictions. One was through a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rule requiring anyone who sells firearms to register as federal firearm licensees. In response, 26 states sued. In a Texas-Kansas lawsuit, a federal judge in Texas said the rule was “almost certainly violative of – at the least – the APA,” The Center Square reported.

This is recent history, too. We’re not stretching back to the Carter administration or anything. Cornyn sold us out just a couple of years ago, and he has the audacity to think we’d just forget it?

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?

Nope.

The issue that has rankled Second Amendment activists goes back to Scott’s signing of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act in March 2018. That took place less than four weeks after the Parkland school massacre, which led to the deaths of 17 people.

The bipartisan legislation raised the minimum age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21; required a three-day waiting period to purchase a firearm; allowed some teachers and other school personnel who underwent special training to arm themselves, and allowed for extreme-risk protection orders, better known as a “red flag” law.

That provision allows law enforcement to ask a judge to temporarily bar dangerous individuals from possessing or purchasing a firearm.

Following mass shootings in the summer of 2019, Scott wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post declaring that he supported a national version of a red-flag law, as well.

It’s that provision (among others) that has led gun rights activists to argue that, at the least, Scott needs to answer for before he is elected to succeed Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader.

“Does he still support a national ‘Red Flag’ law?” asks the American Firearms Association on X.

“Does he support waiting periods on our 2A rights? Does he support raising the age to buy long guns to 21? Does he support abolishing the ATF? Does he support repealing the NFA? Does he support overturning FIX NICS and Joe Biden’s 2022 gun control package? These are questions (and many more) that he must answer based on his history of supporting gun control as Governor of Florida.”

So far as I’m aware, Scott has not repudiated those previous views regarding red flag laws, which is a major problem.

I get that he signed the Florida bills into law in the aftermath of Parkland when a lot of us were struggling to wrap our heads around what happened. However, he’s had time to admit to his mistakes. He hasn’t.

Again, this is just 2019.

Further, he was a co-sponsor of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, though he did vote against the concurrence–where the House and Senate versions are meshed up. I can only assume he thought the House nerfed it too much or something.

While in Florida, he’d been a solid pro-gun Republican for quite some time, so this recent turn has been disappointing in the least because he seems to be going down a pathway that will lead to absolutely no movement federally to restore our gun rights.

That brings me to Sen. Jim Thune.

A lot of people don’t like Thune, and I get it. However, we’re not looking at all the reasons why someone might like or dislike a candidate. We’re looking at one specific issue, and on guns, Thune has the most solid credentials of the three. He voted against the BSCA and has voted against other gun control measures while voting for pro-gun legislation.

I can’t tell anyone how to vote in the Senate, but on the issue of guns, there’s not really a choice here.

However, guns aren’t the only issue the Senate will tackle and there’s more to the job of majority leader than just “where do you stand on this issue.”

Still, there’s more reason to have concerns with Cornyn and Scott. I don’t think we’ll see gun control being pushed, but I also don’t know how realistic our hopes for national reciprocity will be, either.