Voters in Virginia this year told pollsters again and again that their top issue was gun safety. They voted on it, and the NRA—headquartered in Virginia—lost big—as did the Republicans that ran the legislature on behalf of the NRA. Take a special session of the Legislature that Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam called in July to answer the May 31 mass shooting in Virginia Beach, in which 12 people were killed. Here's how Mother Jones reported on what happened the day the session opened: "NRA officials turned the Republican House speaker's conference room into a de facto war room, distributing hundreds of hats and T-shirts to the gun rights supporters who showed up at the Capitol. Some were packing heat; several donned full tactical gear and toted assault rifles as they milled about under the summer sun."
The Republican majority adjourned the special session after just 90 minutes, without considering a single bill. That moment was the catalyst for those Republicans' defeat at the ballot box, and for the first time in a quarter of a century, Democrats now control the Legislature and the governor's office, and the NRA is out. By refusing to give an inch on sensible gun reform in an epidemic of gun violence, it’s destroyed its appeal to the key group it’s counted on to keep electing gun-friendly lawmakers—suburban voters. “What you saw in Virginia was really a trend that had been visible in 2017 and 2018,” Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, told Mother Jones. "President Trump is really unpopular in the suburbs, and that motivates a lot of Democrats to turn out." Trump motivates big Democratic turnout, but it's the Republican voters turning that has Republicans and the NRA worried, as gun safety becomes more and more of a bipartisan issue. "It used to be that Democrats wouldn't talk about gun control outside of the most blue urban districts," Farnsworth said, but not anymore.
A key flip was the 40th District of the House of Delegates, where Rep. Tim Hugo was the last long-serving Republican in the Northern Virginia suburbs. Democrat Dan Helmer, an Army veteran who ran on gun issues, won that seat by 6 points. Even before the Virginia Beach shooting, he said that gun safety was "overwhelmingly" the issue voters brought up with him. "More Virginians die of gun violence each year than die in car accidents, which, if you think of the number of firearms and then the number of cars, is mad," he said. His experience is echoed in Civiqs polling from this summer that found even 77% of Republicans support expanded background checks.
Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, the gun safety group co-founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, is looking ahead to 2020 and the changing landscape on the issue in the all-important suburbs. "I'm not going to tell you Democrats will end up with control of Texas in the next year and a half," Ambler said, "but what you will see in states like Texas … is the same type of shift that you've seen in Virginia for the past few years."