For a while, support for gun control was low. Very low. The anti-Second Amendment movement was struggling to survive as there was little public support for them and no political will at the federal level to actually do anything, even among their allies.

Then Parkland happened.

That flipped the script and suddenly public support for restricting guns surged. Politicians suddenly decided that working toward those ends was a viable strategy. It even played a significant role during the Democratic primaries.

It seems they all believed that support would last forever.

Yeah…about that?

Americans’ support for stricter gun-control measures has fallen to its lowest level since 2014, according to a poll released Wednesday by Gallup.

The results of the October survey come as the number of violent crimes, including murder, has risen and after Americans purchased a record number of guns in 2020.

According to the poll, 52% of U.S. adults say they want stricter gun laws—down from 67% in 2018 after a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., left 17 people dead. Democrats overwhelmingly support stricter measures in the recent survey, while 24% of Republicans do; 11% of U.S. adults polled say they want less-restrictive laws.

The percentage of Americans who support a ban on the possession of handguns fell to 19%, the lowest rate ever recorded by Gallup. Support peaked at 60% when Gallup first asked the question in 1959. The highest recorded rates of support that Gallup found for stricter gun-control laws were in the 1990s.

Now, this is still a slight majority overall, but this is the lowest Gallup has seen since 2014. Back then, there wasn’t really a whole lot of chance of seeing gun control pass at the national level and we all know it. After all, that was just a couple of years after then-candidate Barack Obama acknowledged that there wasn’t enough political will to pass gun control.

And lest someone believe this is just some statistical blip, Cam wrote about another poll earlier this week that had similar results. In that Morning Consult/POLITICO poll, Republicans have a 7-point advantage over Democrats on the issue of “gun policy.”

The truth is that the moment when gun control was likely to pass is over. Pro-Second Amendment lawmakers held their ground long enough that now public support has shifted, just as it always does.

It just took a little longer this time.

None of this should be surprising, though. After all, we’ve watched violent crime increase at a staggering pace. We saw cities burn. We saw a 17-year-old kid chased across Kenosha by a rampaging mob, his life only saved by his use of an AR-15 to defend himself.

Is it any surprise that a lot of people watched that and thought, “Hmmmm. Maybe people should be able to have 30-round magazines after all” or something similar? Of course not.

And let’s not forget about all the people who found out just how much the media has lied about gun laws in this country. “You can buy a gun over the internet,” they were told, but when they called up manufacturers about buying a gun over the internet, they found out that you sorta can, but it still has to go through a licensed dealer.

That wasn’t how CNN described it.

So yeah, people are jumping off that bandwagon. I expect to see gun control play almost no factor in the 2022 midterms or, if it does, it’ll be a bludgeon used to push Democrats out of Congress.

While I expect President Joe Biden to continue to try and push for it, I can see him only doing so half-heartedly.

If he can remember to do so, anyway.