Last Friday, activist Shannon Watts took to social media to respond to the Supreme Court's 8–1 ruling in U.S. v. Rahimi, in which the justices ruled it is legal for the government to temporarily disarm someone whom a court has found poses a safety threat to others. "The Rahimi case should never have been taken up by SCOTUS," she said in a now-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter. "To even question whether domestic abusers should have access to guns shows just how extreme this court has become."

It was an odd thing to say, for a few reasons. For one, the decision, by pretty much all accounts, was a victory for Watts: She is the founder of Moms Demand Action, a gun control advocacy group. Even more puzzlingly, the Supreme Court's ruling overturned a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, so if the justices had not taken up the case, they would have left intact a decision that prohibited the government from enforcing bans on gun ownership for people Watts strongly believes should not have access to firearms.

But the story here isn't that an activist said something head-scratching. The story is that Watts, while making little sense, actually managed to make total sense, against the wider backdrop of the panic associated with the current makeup of the Supreme Court.