Certain progressives’ best and deeply misguided efforts to enact what we are constantly told are nothing more than “common sense” attempts to mitigate gun violence but are in fact ultimately senseless, merely feel-good gun-control measures from the federal level downward notwithstanding, Second Amendment supporters rather handily won a few significant victories throughout 2013. Illinois became the last state to finally enact at least some type of concealed-carry legislation (as weaksauce as it may be) and a Chicago judge just struck down the city’s ban on handgun sales; Coloradans successfully recalled two gun-control advocating state senators from office and pressured a third into resigning; and once again, gun sales across America went through the roof. Via the Washington Times:

Gun records checks, fueled by a post-Newtown boom of gun sales, hit a new high in 2013, and industry analysts expect ammunition to be the big seller this year as consumers catch up to all of those firearms purchases. More than 21 million applications were run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System last year, marking nearly an 8 percent increase and the 11th straight year that the number has risen. Background checks serve as a proxy for the number of gun sales, which soared in the months immediately after the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. But NICS checks plummeted in November and December compared with a year earlier, suggesting that the boom may be over. “2013 was the best year for firearm sales (commercial, domestic) in history — period! That’s true for NH to Hawaii,” said Richard Feldman, president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association in Rindge, N.H. “Ruger alone sold well over one million guns this year.”

While Democrats may want to raise as many alternative issues as possible to distract from the awkward disaster that is ObamaCare, I have the gravest doubts that gun control is going to be one of them as they fight to maintain their hold on the Senate. The now-former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg just donated $2.5 million to the Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC that has already cut ads supporting the vulnerable Democratic Sens. Pryor, Hagan, and Begich (all of whom voted nay on the Senate’s gun-control push last April). Noah Rothman at Mediaite interprets Bloomberg’s newfound willingness to be a team player with some of the same vulnerable Democrats he and his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group were attacking earlier in 2013 as a sign that the once gung-ho gun control push has definitely fizzled in the run-up to the midterms — and it doesn’t exactly appear to be a winning issue, does it?