Well this wasn’t the news we expected this morning, but we’ll certainly take it.  According to a NY Daily News report, Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Harry Reid, plan to abandon their efforts to pass universal background checks and other gun control measures for the rest of 2013.

Senator Reid met with anti-gun group “Moms Demand Action,” and made it clear that gun control wouldn’t be a high priority for lawmakers this year.

In a meeting Thursday with a pro-gun-control group, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said budget battles looming this fall will make it impossible to enact the background-check measure that failed to pass in April.

“I think sometime next year we’ll revisit that issue. I’m almost certain of it,” Reid (D-Nev.) told the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, according to a reporter for The Nation who was allowed to sit in on the meeting.

The news comes as a bit of a shock following this past April, in which Democrats pushed a number of bills meant to limit and infringe the Second Amendment.  Despite the wave of alleged “support” for these measures, Democrats were unable to secure the 60 votes needed to pass a GOP filibuster.

But it wasn’t just Republicans who opposed gun control, even Democrats avoided supporting the watered down universal background check bill, which led to its inevitable defeat.

So what’s the cause of this sudden change of heart?

For starters, the overwhelming lack of support must be troubling anti-gun Democrats, who have started to realize that the 2014 elections are coming sooner rather than later.  To make matters worse, state legislators have lost seats in Connecticut and two more senators will be recalled in Colorado—two places that have enacted the strictest gun control laws.

Whatever the reasoning may be, gun owners should rejoice but remain wary of future 2^nd Amendment infringements.  Democrats might be running scared on gun control, but that doesn’t mean they’re prepared to give up just yet.