Let’s suppose that you are the sort of person who thinks that this country has a “gun problem,” and that the “gun problem” in question is that too many people have too many guns. You might think, instinctively, that the Republicans – who are by and large the non-gun-grabbing party in America – are to blame for this, due to their obstruction of the various gun grabbing measures the Democrats are proposing.

You would, however, be wrong. People have largely baked into their political awareness that Democrats are pro-gun control and Republicans are opposed, and that there are enough Democrats in Congress who oppose any overt gun grabbing legislation that they feel safe in knowing that the government is not really going to come and get their guns. So, stories like this about the Democrats preparing a gun control package that will never pass are not that alarming.

However, Barack Obama’s unprecedented disregard for the authority of Congress to set legislative policy has changed the equation. Now that voters know they can no longer trust Congress to assert its authority against Obama (or any Democrat), they live in legitimate fear that a Democrat president will unilaterally pass nonsensical (because Democrats don’t understand guns) regulations that will make it difficult or impossible to buy certain kinds of guns.

It does not help that the presumptive Democratic nominee is out on the trail explicitly promising to take executive action on guns against the will of Congress, either. Nor can any gun owner feel good about the fact that the media, working hand in glove with the Democrats, is busy using every tragedy in this country as an extended free commercial for gun control advocates.

This is exactly the kind of political stew that leads to a couple of eminently foreseeable consequences. The first is that people should be expected to buy more guns. A lot more, in fact. And lo, September was a record month in the United States for gun sales:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation processed a record number of background checks in the month of September, indicating that gun sales were at an all time high for the month.

The FBI’s National Instant Background Check System processed 1,795,102 applications to buy a firearm in September. That represents a new record: 335,739 more checks than the previous September high set in 2012, or a 23 percent increase.

The number of checks done in a particular month is considered a reliable gauge of how many gun sales have occurred since background checks are required on all sales made through licensed firearms dealers. The actual number of sales is likely higher since multiple firearms can be sold to the same person by a dealer under a single background check. The numbers also do not account for sales between private parties that do not require a background check.

The second foreseeable consequence is that the American public is going to recoil from the shameless exploitation of tragedy and punish those responsible. And lo, we find that the full-court press for gun control, mounted on the backs of dead Americans, has actually gravely wounded the viability of the gun control movement:

Well, it looks like that constant gun control drumbeat by Democrat politicians and the American media is really paying off, in terms of public opinion polling. For the first time since 1989, the majority of the American public does not think it is “too easy” to buy a gun:

For the first time since its inception, a CNN/ORC poll finds that most Americans do not believe current gun laws make it “too easy” for Americans to buy guns.

When asked, “In your view, do existing laws make it too easy for people to buy guns, too difficult, or are they about right?”, 49 percent of respondents said “about right.”

Forty-one percent of respondents said current law made it “too easy” for people to buy guns and 10 percent said they made it “too difficult.” Only 1 percent of respondents had no opinion.

The poll has asked the question periodically since 1989. This is the first time that less than 56 percent of respondents have said guns are “too easy” to buy. In August 1993, 70 percent of respondents had answered guns were “too easy” to buy, the poll’s all-time high.

This shift in attitude is pretty shocking, when you consider how easily the American public is led about by their nose by the media. In this case, though, the reason for the public’s unwillingness to follow the Democrat/media narrative on guns is that it doesn’t make any sense.

Here on the Republican side of the aisle, we have become wise to the ways of political “failure theater,” in which our side pretends to achieve a political goal they have no intention of actually achieving, in order that they may continue to come to us with fundraising pitches and pleas for votes. Republicans use abortion, immigration, spending, and any number of other things for failure theater. Part of the reason they are in so much trouble in 2016 (whatever the polls might say now) is that the GOP’s voting base is waking up to the existence of failure theater and has had enough of it.

Gun control, on the other hand, is the Democrats’ favorite form of failure theater. Democrats saw what happened in Colorado and other places when they actually implemented the gun control regulations the gun grabbers want, and they don’t desire to replicate that on the national stage. So they instead pull these meaningless failure theater gestures to appease their base and give them a reason to turn out in 2016. Sadly, Democrat voters don’t seem to realize that they’re being played on this front.

But while the Democrats are doing nothing to actually implement gun control, their efforts – combined with their servile submission to Obama’s lawless use of executive authority – are having a very real effect: they are causing people who actually own guns and who are watching what is happening in this country to buy a lot more guns, and to become much more entrenched against the current ghoulish gun control campaign.

If you’re looking for someone to blame for the increase in the proliferation of guns in this country, don’t blame the Republicans; blame Obama instead.