Ironically, it was the massacre at Columbine that finally got gun owners off their butts in this country, because so many politicians were starting to bleat out "ban the guns!" in unison that the 2nd-Amendment crowd realized that it was for real this time, and they could end up losing practially all their gun rights. So they fought back, as I noted in a post above. And they won so overwhelming that most gun control advocacy groups are either in or near bankruptcy, and it will probably be a generation before any serious attempt at gun control ever gets any traction again, except in a few ultraliberal states where we'll probably have to go through another couple of election cycles to vote out the hoplophobes. (9/11 helps immensely in this aspect, though we had already won everything I'm writing about it in this post long before that date.)
Yep. I followed all that via the portal of FR. Even got some letters published in US papers, warning them not to follow Australia's flawed 'gun control' precedent. I think 911 and Ashcroft's statements have had a big effect too, Timesink. There's an under-discussed issue pinging around in the public's subconscious since then; 'can I depend on the government alone, to protect me and mine?'