And then the 2024 elections happened. 

Now, they're getting ready for Trump 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Donald Trump’s imminent return to Washington has put gun-safety groups on high alert, as the president-elect once described himself as “the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House”.

Emma Brown, executive director of the gun-safety group Giffords, initially reacted to the news of Trump’s victory in the presidential race not with dismay, but with defiance.

“When you take a step back and you look at the multi-decade arc of this issue, it’s obvious that we have had lots of ups and downs,” Brown said. “The first thought in my head [when Trump won] was: we’re ready for this.”

With Trump returning for a second term, gun safety groups acknowledge that they will spend much of the next four years playing defense at the federal level. But despite their disappointment over Kamala Harris’s loss, advocates voiced determination and some cautious optimism about what they can achieve at the state level and through corporate accountability measures during Trump’s presidency.

“We’ve been at this rodeo before,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “But we’ve got the playbook from 2016, and in some ways, I think we’re in much better shape than we were in 2016.”

...

“I’m not trying to be pollyannish about this, but it is a different ballgame,” Feinblatt said. “Democrats are now completely solid on the issue of gun safety. Our grassroots army has grown substantially in the last eight years and is almost three times the size of the NRA.”

You keep telling yourself that, buddy.

The Guardian opted to focus on how the NRA is a shadow of its former self as if it was the only barrier to gun control in the United States. That's a common enough belief among those who favor infringing on our right to keep and bear arms, but it's also an idiotic take.

See, the power of the NRA always rested, at least to some degree, on the army of voters they could mobilize to oust politicians that favored gun control. They couldn't do it everywhere, but they could do it often enough that when they warned members of Congress to shape up, they listened.

Sure, Democrats are now solid on the issue of gun control and the activist base has grown, but so what? Activists don't vote on laws in Congress. They can annoy lawmakers, but all those incoming Republicans that will make up the majority of both chambers of Congress? They're not going to be beholden to largely Democratic activists.

Anti-gunners may figure they've been here before and they're in better shape than they were, but it's absolutely ridiculous to think any of that stuff actually matters this time around.

I've been through hurricanes a few times. It doesn't change the fact that I can't do anything about one bearing down on me.

That's where anti-gunners really are. They can pretend they're being realistic, but despite all these things they think put them in good stead, they lost big in November. Kamala Harris tried desperately to mute the pro-gun response to her calls for various gun control measures and she got pounded like no Democrat since Walter Mondale.

They can talk about their activist base, but a lot of those activists are now disheartened. A lot of those "solid" Democrats are starting to wonder if gun control is really a winning issue for them.

In reality, I think any belief that they're in good shape is just self-delusion.

Which is what anti-gunners are best at, really.