You might very well be right. That said, I think a clever Democrat could totally make "guns" a Democratic issue.

Follow the militia movement at all and what you see is a bunch of people who feel threatened, who feel disenfranchised, who are seeking a sense of belonging and purpose. Sure, there's the lunatic fringe but most all of them are veterans and patriots. I don't think the Republicans can wrap themselves in the flag nearly so easily as they could in 2012... and I think that if a handful of Democratic governors decided to say "purpose of a well-armed militia being freely established... shit, that's you guys. We're going to give you some ham radio frequencies, we're going to give you upper-level briefings on border security, disaster preparedness and search and rescue, we're going to sponsor trainings and outings and we're going to leave your governance up to you but set some minimum standards that allow us to integrate you as an independent entity within state civil planning" there'd be a lot of democratic-voting gun owners.

There's this real "all guns are bad all the time" rhetoric that's built up on the Democratic side that I think is a whole lot harder and a whole lot less productive than co-opting the "advanced boy scout" aspect of gun culture. I think you could knock that shit over in a couple state-sponsored weekends. The guys in Civil Air Patrol? The guys in Search & Rescue? They're the same guys doing Every Day Carry.