Supporters of gun-control legislation won an important victory Thursday morning when the Senate voted sixty-eight to thirty-one against a Republican-led filibuster that would have prevented a bill from coming to the floor to be debated. They may very well lose all the fights to come, but with this one win, at least, they’ve learned an important lesson: the best way to defeat the N.R.A. and its allies might be to let them beat themselves.

The vote was so lopsided, its outcome so assured, in part because staunchly pro-gun conservatives in the Senate overplayed their hand by very publicly declaring that they would do their best not just to prevent the bill from getting passed but from even being discussed by the full Senate. In the current environment, there was no way that could work, not with the memory of twenty dead children still present in the national consciousness. But the Senators who led the filibuster attempt had every reason for their overconfidence in an extreme stance: they’re taking their cues from a group and a movement that has become extreme and overconfident.

The N.R.A. has had every reason to feel secure in its power and position in Washington. It has an almost unbroken twenty-year winning streak, and has convinced vulnerable moderates that bucking it means electoral death. But the downside of that success is now becoming more apparent: as it racked up win after win, the group moved further to the right, and now it has boxed itself in. Now, it must oppose any gun-control measure, no matter how watered-down and inoffensive—even the things, like universal background checks, it once supported. Even if it didn’t want to hold these positions, it now basically has to; by competing for the fringes, it’s put itself in competition with groups like Gun Owners of America that take an even harder line. If it wavers, it risks losing members and money to its rivals.

Now, faced with a compromise on universal background checks drafted by two Senators, Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, to whom it had previously given an A rating—one of whom, Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, was previously perhaps best known for a campaign ad in which he quite literally shot up a copy of proposed environmental legislation—the N.R.A. is continuing its stubborn opposition. It will fight against the Manchin-Toomey compromise, and it will take any votes for that compromise into account as it compiles its grades for individual members of Congress. It will do this despite the fact that it has, thus far, been unable to come up with any substantial justification—real or imagined—for this position. Once, the N.R.A. said it was against expanding background checks because it feared the next step would be a federal registry of guns and gun owners. Confronted with a measure that will reportedly include a provision that would make anyone who creates such a registry subject to a fifteen-year prison sentence, it is still against expanding background checks.

Gun control could still be defeated in the Senate or the House. If it is, the N.R.A. will have won a minor victory, but it will likely have done itself some real damage in the process. It could have signed on to the Manchin-Toomey compromise, or it could at least have opted not to put its full weight against it; then, if the bill passed, it would still have sent the message that nothing gets done without the N.R.A.’s allowing it to happen. By staying overconfident, by digging in its heels, it’s putting its reputation as the one truly unbeatable lobby at risk. With gun-control advocates finally gaining some momentum, with new groups and new money entering the scene, that’s not something the N.R.A. can afford right now.

Photograph by Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty