I picked up a little bit of wisdom watching nature shows when I was a kid, and if you had a similar upbringing, I suspect you did, too.

One of the things we learned is that when an apex predator at the top of the food chain makes a kill, it tends to gorge itself on the carcass until it is full, and then, once sated, it leaves the carcass behind for scavengers. These scavengers—whether hyenas, vultures, or crows—then fight among themselves to lord over the rotting flesh, entrails, bones, and other detritus left behind.

When a elephant falls, it doesn’t take long for the scavengers to move in, and being what they are, you can guess their favorite point of entry.

Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS), indeed.

We’ve been watching similar behavior from the rest of the gun control movement in the past 48 hours. Reality is that they contributed money to Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe’s campaign only after it was polling far ahead of Republican challenger Ken Cucinnelli in a race that had all but been decided by that point.

It was McAuliffe’s profound fundraising advantage that defeated Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor’s race, not late support from gun control groups, as even left-wing Politico is forced to admit:

McAuliffe outraised Cuccinelli by almost $15 million, and he used the cash advantage to pummel him on the airwaves. A lack of resources forced the Republican to go dark in the D.C. media market during the final two weeks.

The Republican National Committee spent about $3 million on Virginia this year, compared to $9 million in the 2009 governor’s race.

The Chamber of Commerce spent $1 million boosting McDonnell in 2009 and none this time.

“If the Republicans would have rallied around the nominee instead of refusing to support Cuccinelli, he would have won,” said a GOP source involved in the race.

Even with the GOP abandoning Cuccinelli (allegedly, for being too “Tea Party” for establishment Republicans),  and a massive cash advantage, McAuliffe barely won: he pulled in 48% of the vote (1,066,149) to Cuccinelli’s 45.5% (1,010,929). If Robert Sarvis hadn’t run as a faux libertarian 3rd-party spoiler siphoning away 6.6% of the vote (145,762), Cuccinelli might have won even with no national GOP support.

This hasn’t kept the vultures of the gun control movement from claiming that they killed the elephant. Writing in the Huffington Post, gun control fanatic Adam Winkler crows, “NRA loses big at home.”

Yesterday’s gubernatorial election in Virginia was a remarkable setback for the Virginia-based National Rifle Association. Democrat Terry McAuliffe beat Republican Ken Cuccinelli, despite McAuliffe’s support of expansive new gun control laws, like universal background checks and limits on assault rifles and high-capacity magazine. Indeed, McAuliffe had an “F” rating from the NRA, compared to Cuccinelli’s “A” rating. And yet, even in a state with a lot of rural, pro-gun voters, McAuliffe emerged victorious.

The reality is that the Virginia governor’s race wasn’t about guns, and gun control groups didn’t start pour money into the race until well after McAuliffe was polling well ahead of Cucinelli.

Indeed, the effect of their $4 million in blatantly dishonest ads almost cost McAuliffe the election.

But Virginia’s race wasn’t all about guns. While gun control advocates and gun rights groups spent a combined $4 million on the gubernatorial matchup, much of the money was spent just weeks before Election Day and at a time when McAuliffe already had a strong leg up in the polls. The NRA estimates it spent upwards of $1 million on the race. Candidates focused on the economy, health care and women’s rights, instead. Conversations about gun control were few and far between and didn’t surface until late into the race.

McAuliffe’s victory as a NRA-renegade isn’t unprecedented in the state. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., for example, won his election despite an “F” NRA rating in 2012.

The National Rifle Association’s spokesman Andrew Arulanandam argues that gun control advocates in the race actually damaged McAuliffe’s brand, not strengthened it.

“The political reality is that Bloomberg came in a week before the election and spent $2 million on TV ads exclusively in the D.C. media market and in that one week, a double digit lead was whittled down to three points,” Arulanandam says.

Pouring a cup of water on the deck of a sinking ship doesn’t give you credit for sinking that ship, and pouring a few million dollars of gun control ads into a gubernatorial race and costing your candidate votes so that he wins in spite of your support doesn’t mean that your you cause is gaining popularity.

This is especially true when gun control has cost other gun control supporters their offices elsewhere as recently as Tuesday.

Colorado Democratic Governor Hickenlooper is so terrified of gun control “support” that he’s told gun control groups to stay away from the state.

Gun control groups can claim that they affected the outcome of the race all they want, because they did.

They almost gave a barely-supported NRA “A”-rated candidate the victory in a race that was a blowout before they started shrieking lies that almost cost their candidate the race.

Again.