The politics of gun control

[IceSpear]

Is it safe to say that the reason why gun control will always be a losing issue for the Democrats isn't because the majority doesn't support it (polls consistently show they do), but because of voters' priorities? Putting it simply, if gun control magically vanished as an issue tomorrow, would a non negligible amount of people be more open to voting Republican? It seems very rare to find someone who says gun control is a top tier reason why they vote Democrat. On the other side of the coin, if gun control vanished as an issue, there's probably a decent chunk of voters that would at least be potentially reachable for Democrats that currently aren't. It seems like you constantly hear about being pro-gun being a major driving force for someone to identify as a Republican and/or support them...and there just doesn't seem to be that same driving force for being anti-gun and identifying as a Democrat and/or supporting them.

Of course, this is just my theory, I could be totally off base here. What does Atlas think?