Midterm politics hung heavy in the air when the Senate last year fell five votes short of blocking a Republican-led filibuster against the bill to expand background checks for gun purchases. Two of the Democrats who voted against the Manchin-Toomey bill were up for reelection in 2014 in red states: Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska. Their decision to break with their party—over the pleas of parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary a few months earlier—was put in yet starker relief by the fact that two other Democratic senators who were up for reelection in 2014 in challenging terrain had voted for Manchin-Toomey: Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

After the vote, many commentators—including some liberal ones—argued that Begich and Pryor had done the politically prudent thing, even if it meant contributing to a big setback for a key issue in the Democratic agenda. Landrieu and Hagan, the thinking went, had put themselves at risk for a losing cause, while Pryor and Begich would at least have gun-rights proponents on their side in their battles to help the Democrats hold their Senate majority. Underlying this judgment was the widespread perception that for senators from red and purple states, the National Rifle Association is not to be messed with.

Well, so far the midterm season isn’t shaping up as the conventional wisdom on gun politics would have it. Of the four senators mentioned above, the only one who has maintained a steady if slim lead in the polls is Hagan, who voted for Manchin-Toomey. Meanwhile, it’s not clear what Pryor and Begich gained by voting against the measure, which would have expanded the background checks now required at licensed firearm dealerships to include gun shows and many private sales. Despite Pryor’s vote, the NRA went ahead and endorsed his Republican opponent, Congressman Tom Cotton, and is running ads on his behalf. In Alaska, the NRA opted not to endorse at all, a small comfort for Begich, but presumably not what he was hoping for in jilting his party on Manchin-Toomey. And despite that vote, and Begich’s “A” rating from the NRA, his Republican opponent is running ads attacking him as weak on the Second Amendment because he has voted for “Barack Obama’s anti-gun judges.”

Taken together, the midterm season is providing more evidence for the case I made in a cover story last year that the politics of gun control are evolving more than the longstanding pundit fatalism around the issue, which intensified following the filibuster of Manchin-Toomey, would have one believe. At the time, I noted points that were too often overlooked: that six senators with “A” ratings from the NRA had supported Manchin-Toomey; that plenty of senators with lousy NRA ratings, such as Virginia’s Tim Kaine, had for years been winning statewide elections in red and purple states. The fatalists saw confirmation in the recall last September of two Colorado state senators who had voted for gun control legislation in that state, a conclusion that overlooked the flukish nature of that special election, a circumstance tailor-made for gun-rights activists. Somehow, the election a short while later of a governor and attorney general in Virginia who had spoken out strongly against the NRA in its home state failed to get as much notice.

That Hagan is the only one of the four vulnerable Democrats mentioned above who is ahead in the polls is a further indication that crossing the NRA is hardly fatal. Meanwhile, the fact that Pryor and Begich are getting nothing in return from the NRA for their votes against Manchin-Toomey is yet another suggestion that the organization’s hold on American politics is loosening, or at least narrowing. One of the reasons the NRA held such sway for so long was that it commanded support from key Democratic elected officials such as John Dingell, the veteran congressman from Michigan, who could count on being rewarded for their votes with staunch NRA support, regardless of their party label. But many of those Democrats have been leaving the scene, either via retirement (like Dingell) or electoral defeat.