Eric Swalwell is campaigning to be president. He’s doing everything he can to be considered a viable presidential candidate. That includes drawing attention to his key (and perhaps only) campaign issue, gun control.

That effort took him to Houston, Texas recently, where he spoke with activists about his gun control efforts – with a whole 15 people.

Gun safety is the most important issue of Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell’s presidential campaign. Texas is synonymous with the Second Amendment. The juxtaposition brought candor Wednesday from Houstonians who gave Swalwell their opinions on the gun debate.

Swalwell’s “gun violence listening tour” stopped off at a downtown Houston coffee shop, and the four-term California congressman did not stop traffic.

The shop’s baristas did not step away from their espresso machines to gawk. His name provoked a shoulder shrug from one of them, white noise between customers’ orders.

Though Swalwell, 38, is a frequent guest on cable news shows – he also introduced legislationearly this month to suspend the statue of limitations for sitting presidents, so President Donald Trump could be prosecuted for federal crimes he may have committed before or during his time in office – he is relatively unknown outside Capitol Hill and his East Bay congressional district.

…

Sitting next to Swalwell on a sofa Wednesday, Hart asked the 15 people who’d gathered for the roundtable discussion to compare Congress’ response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to its response to mass shootings.

Houston, Texas is a city with a population of 2.3 million people. As an urban center, there are a lot of people who support gun control based on the misguided idea that such a measure will actually reduce violence in our cities. Swalwell’s message should resonate in a place like that.

And yet, there were just 15 people there.

Wow.

Now, Democratic frontrunners like Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden, have all rolled out their own gun control packages and are garnering a great deal of support for that. However, they also have plans beyond gun control. They’re not single-issue candidates.

Plus, none of them threatened to nuke their fellow Americans, so there’s that.

In this mess, there’s a message to Democratic candidates and candidates in general. While gun control is something that your base may like, it’s not their most pressing issue. They care about a lot of other things besides gun control and, when it comes down to it, gun control won’t be enough to garner support.

Clearly.

After all, Swalwell’s anti-gun message hasn’t even gotten him enough support to get mentioned in the polling, apparently. It seems that even Democrats don’t care enough about gun control to back the gun control candidate.

I mean, 15 people out of 2.3 million, plus the surrounding areas? Frankly, that should be a clue to just pack it in.