And that’s the simple divide.
People care enough to join the NRA, buy annual memberships, elect to round up their putcahse at a gun shop to send a few cents to them, to show up at conventions, to show up at annual fundraising banquets down locally, etc.
NRA members do all these things. Because they are motivated by the cause.
On contrast while lots of people will voice support for gun control on idea when asked, they don’t really care enough to do much more.
Look at pictures of any protest outside the NRA national conventions any year. While the NRA will draw 50,000-70,000 people to the event the protests organized against them can barely get a couple hundred people.
So it’s one thing to say “people support this in polls” and another to see how the is a wide gap in levels of motivation to act behind the stance.
And politicians know this.
And they know it plays out big time in how people vote. There are a lot of anti gun control people for whine that is a make or break issue for if they will vote for a candidate. That is not nearly as true on the other side, most gun control advocates are not single issue voters and quite frankly most that would be are already solid Democrats anyway.
Gun control wins in polls if you just ask. But if you look at the level of motivation the other side wins by a huge margin.
A good analogy would be the gay rights movement in the 80’s and 90’s. If you polled people the majority by a huge amount was against marriage equality and any form of civil right protection. But they didn’t care enough to act on that for the most part. Meanwhile your advocates for civil rights and equality for the LGBT population were motivated and active and got out and did stuff, even though they were outnumbered based on polls their work and actions accomplished more than their numbers.
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