In 2003, Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle coined a razor that remains invaluable for predicting group behavior patterns in the context of American politics. “Jane’s Law” supposes the following: “The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.” The first part of this axiom is getting a stress test in 2017; the party in power seems more fractious and dysfunctional than haughty and overreaching. But the second element of this maxim remains as true as ever: Democrats are losing their minds.

The most recent example of this phenomenon in practice comes courtesy of New York’s 4th Congressional District. “I’m just going to say it,” Rep. Kathleen Rice wrote on Thursday. “#NRA & [NRA Spokeswoman Dana Loesch] are quickly becoming domestic security threats under President Trump. We can’t ignore that.”

With that, Rice threw a wrench into an ongoing intra-Republican debate over the National Rifle Association’s new tactics, one that might have benefited Democrats had they allowed it to mature unmolested. But Rice couldn’t help herself. Inspired by a misguided sense of duty and buttressed by the support of an increasingly radical base of liberal activists, the congresswomen felt secure enough in her position to brand an organization and, by association, its 5 million members threats to American national security. That thought is, to put it mildly, demented. It is a sad commentary on Rice and her supporters that she did not think that giving voice to such an irrational sentiment would have consequences for her or her party. It very well might.

Rice’s intemperate assertion interrupted a sotto voce debate on the right over whether the NRA’s new communications strategy is reflective of an organization that has lost its purpose. The group managed to withstand a seemingly endless series of frontal assaults on gun ownership rights during the Obama years, and it has the battle scars to prove it. But with victory has come aimlessness. Those great fights are won, and those enemies are vanquished. The nation is far more culturally conservative when it comes to gun ownership than it was in the last century. The threats to gun ownership rights are no longer emanating from the White House or Congress; they are relegated to the municipal level and lower courts. Those are serious fights, but they lack the urgency that typified opposition to the Obama administration’s efforts to restrict Second Amendment rights. Perhaps as a result of this dynamic, the National Rifle Association’s pitch has grown more frenetic in a manner that seems inversely proportional to the scale of the threat it faces.

It’s not about hunting anymore. To hear columnist and NRA Spokeswoman Dana Loesch tell it, the biggest threat to gun ownership rights in America today isn’t the Democratic Party but the New York Times. In a controversial April video, Loesch attacked the “old gray hag” as an “untrustworthy, dishonest rag that has subsisted on the welfare of mediocrity.” “In short, we’re coming for you.” In a subsequent June video, Loesch went after liberal activists ranging from Hollywood celebrities to the “Resistance,” all of who—she implied—are complicit in inciting anti-Donald Trump violence and property destruction. “The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth,” she menacingly concluded.

Liberals responded to these videos with the kind of apoplexy Jane’s Law anticipated they would. Some said these statements amounted to calls to violence or even “civil war.” They didn’t seem to notice that Loesch was denouncing violence, not advocating it. Nevertheless, the equation of speech (lies) with violence is the kind of blurred distinction that has rendered the activist left militant and, in some instances, dangerous.

This intramural conservative debate has been cut short by Rep. Rice, who compelled conservatives to circle the wagons. Her comment was truly reckless, and the only decent thing to do is to demand her censure and insist that the political press probe her fellow Democrats as to whether or not they think that kind of sentiment is legitimate. The fact that those two outcomes are highly unlikely will only heighten conservatives’ sense of grievance and unify the movement against an external threat.

Republicans are heading into the 2018 election cycle bereft of much to show for their prohibitive political dominance. They will need all the help they can get in the effort to drive their voters to the polls next November. The culture wars provide fertile soil in which to sow animosity and reap aggrieved and energized voters. Democrats would be better served by not helping Republicans in that project. At least, they would if they had not been driven insane.