Sen. Roger Marshall’s blunt admission that any strike on Iran’s dual-use infrastructure will inevitably kill civilians is a stark reminder that the same political class now openly discussing “acceptable” collateral damage is the one that spent the last decade trying to disarm law-abiding Americans at home. When a sitting senator can casually normalize civilian deaths abroad while simultaneously pushing red-flag laws and magazine bans here, the disconnect is impossible to ignore: the people who lecture us about “gun violence” have no problem with state violence when it serves their foreign-policy goals.

For the 2A community, the takeaway is straightforward—rights that depend on the goodwill of politicians who treat civilian casualties as a rounding error are rights that can be revoked at any moment. The same logic that justifies bombing power plants and water-treatment facilities in Iran because they also serve the military can be repurposed to justify confiscating semi-automatic rifles because they also serve self-defense. Marshall’s candor should steel every gun owner’s resolve to keep the means of resistance in private hands rather than trust it to a government comfortable with collateral damage.