In a moment of accidental candor on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” co-host Symone Sanders Townsend admitted what redistricting critics have been saying for years: Rep. James Clyburn’s South Carolina district “already looks like it was gerrymandered.” While interviewing the veteran Democrat, Sanders Townsend gestured toward a map and essentially confirmed that the oddly shaped 6th District, which snakes through predominantly Black communities across multiple counties, was drawn with race as the predominant factor. This slip-up is particularly delicious because Democrats and their media allies have spent the better part of a decade screaming that any attempt by Republican-led legislatures to draw more compact, logical districts constitutes an assault on democracy itself.
The irony runs deeper for the 2A community. Clyburn has long been one of the most reliable anti-gun votes in Congress, consistently supporting assault weapon bans, magazine limits, and the erosion of shall-issue permitting. His district was carefully engineered under the Voting Rights Act to guarantee a safe Democratic seat, effectively concentrating urban voters while diluting more conservative, rural voices that tend to be strongly pro-Second Amendment. When Republican legislatures respond by drawing maps that prioritize traditional redistricting principles like compactness and respecting county lines, the left cries foul, even as their own maps resemble abstract art projects designed to protect incumbents like Clyburn. The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that partisan gerrymandering claims are largely non-justiciable, yet racial gerrymandering remains under scrutiny, something Democrats conveniently ignore when it preserves their power.
This exchange reveals the selective outrage that defines today’s gun control debate. The same voices demanding “fair maps” have no problem with districts engineered to maximize the electoral strength of politicians who want to disarm law-abiding citizens. For Second Amendment supporters, the lesson is clear: redistricting fights aren’t abstract exercises in cartography; they directly impact who writes the laws that either protect or threaten our constitutional rights. When safe seats protect anti-gun stalwarts, rural gun owners in South Carolina and beyond find their political voice diluted by the very map-drawing tactics Democrats pretend to oppose only when it suits them. The real gerrymandering threat to self-defense rights isn’t found in compact districts that better reflect communities of interest; it’s in the contorted boundaries that have protected Clyburn’s seat and his anti-2A agenda for decades.
