Maine’s Democratic nominee for the 2nd Congressional District, Matt Dunlap, has a voting record that should give pause to anyone who believes the Second Amendment is the only constitutional right worth defending. While serving in the State House, Dunlap opposed measures that would have imposed lifetime probation on repeat sexual offenders, stiffened penalties for adults who use computers to solicit children for sex, and created a specific crime for attackers who kill an unborn child by assaulting a pregnant woman. Those positions are not abstract policy footnotes; they reveal a worldview that treats the most vulnerable members of society—children and the unborn—as less deserving of iron-clad legal protection than the adults who prey on them.

For the 2A community, the lesson is straightforward: a politician who is willing to weaken safeguards for kids is unlikely to treat the right to keep and bear arms as sacrosanct once he reaches Washington. Dunlap’s record shows a consistent preference for shielding offenders over empowering law-abiding citizens, whether the issue is sexual predation or self-defense. Gun owners who assume that “soft-on-crime” candidates will suddenly become stalwart defenders of the Second Amendment once they arrive in Congress are ignoring the pattern that produced this voting history in the first place.

The broader implication is that the fight for constitutional rights is not compartmentalized. When a candidate demonstrates hostility to the most basic protections for children, that same philosophy tends to travel with him to every other issue, including the right of responsible adults to defend themselves and their families. Maine’s 2nd District race is therefore not merely a contest over gun policy; it is a referendum on whether voters want a representative whose record suggests that some constitutional protections are negotiable.