The AP-NORC poll’s finding that Americans are increasingly willing to remove illegal immigrants is more than a border story—it’s a referendum on whether the rule of law still matters. When the public sees that federal statutes are treated as optional, the same skepticism bleeds into every other statute, including the Second Amendment. Gun owners have watched sanctuary jurisdictions nullify federal immigration law and then turn around and nullify federal firearms law with red-flag orders and magazine bans; the two impulses spring from the same well of selective enforcement. A renewed commitment to deporting those present unlawfully signals that statutes can still be enforced, and that precedent matters to the millions of citizens who treat the right to keep and bear arms as non-negotiable.

For the 2A community, the practical stakes are immediate. Illegal immigrants are already prohibited possessors under federal law, yet permissive sanctuary policies have created pockets where background-check databases are incomplete and local cooperation with ICE is nonexistent. Restoring interior enforcement would shrink the pool of unvetted individuals inside the country and, just as importantly, re-establish the principle that federal supremacy still exists—an argument the gun-rights movement needs when states openly defy Bruen and Heller. In short, voters who demand that immigration statutes be honored are laying ideological groundwork for demanding that the right to bear arms be honored as well.