Vin Suprynowicz

The national media didn’t talk much about gun control as Barack Obama’s “irrelevant” opposition — the GOP that he saw no need to consult as he was forcing Obamacare down the nation’s throat — swept to a decisive victory in November.

No, Democrats and their handmaidens of the press prefer to pretend our elections are all about bad Republicans hoping to take away women’s access to birth control.

In Colorado, incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Udall, though backed with plenty of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control cash, was so devoted to this theme this election year that his opponents took to calling him “Mark Uterus.” Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels wrote that if the Udall-Gardner Senate race were a movie, it would have to be “set in a gynecologist’s office.”

The Post, Colorado’s biggest newspaper, in October endorsed Udall’s challenger, Republican Congressman Cory Gardner, complaining Udall had “devoted a shocking amount of energy and money trying to convince voters that Gardner seeks to outlaw birth control despite the congressman’s call for over-the-counter sales of contraceptives.”

The real issue? A week after the Sandy Hook school shootings in December, 2012, Udall came out in favor of more gun control, announcing “I’ve come to the conclusion that military style weapons really don’t have any place in our society.” (Udall was referring, of course, to semi-automatic rifles that haven’t been state-of-the-art for military use since 1950, when Harry Truman was president.) “We ought to reinstate the assault weapons ban that served us well for 10 years from 1994 to 2004,” Udall added, ignoring the fact no one has been able to show how that “ugly weapons ban,” which focused on things like hand grips and bayonet lugs, reduced crime by one iota. Udall then proceeded to vote for the Manchin-Toomey “expanded background-check” bill the following April.

Challenger Gardner, on the other hand, as a state representative introduced a “Make My Day Better” law which would have extended Colorado’s “Make My Day” protections of homeowner self-defense to business owners and employees.

It failed, but Sen. Udall attacked him for even trying. Apparently Sen. Udall is opposed to store clerks, jewelers, and bartenders being able to defend themselves against armed assailants. Voters aren’t.

Gardner won, leading a national Republican sweep.

Elsewhere, about the same time Colorado’s Udall went under, two-term incumbent Mark Pryor of Arkansas went down to freshman Republican Congressman Tom Cotton.

Even far-left magazine Mother Jones had called the Arkansas race an important one for gun-grabbers to watch, noting “The NRA has spent big on this key Senate race, investing in Republican Rep. Tom Cotton, with $1.4 million going to TV ads. In 2013, Cotton co-sponsored the “National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act,” which would have allowed concealed carry license holders to pack heat in all states that permit concealed carry.”

Indeed he did. And Cotton won.

ONE RACE AT A TIME

The North Carolina Senate race was a little different. Incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan had voted against bans on those same semi-automatic rifles that the victim-disarmament gang love to call “assault weapons,” as well as a ban on normal capacity magazines. But then she turned around and voted for the Manchin-Toomey background-check amendment.

Meantime, her GOP challenger, Speaker of the North Carolina House Thom Tillis, with an A+ rating from the NRA, helped pass a bill expanding concealed carry in North Carolina to include school parking lots, public parks, and restaurants serving alcohol.

Gun-hating Gabby Gifford’s “Americans for Responsible Solutions” slipped Democrat Hagan $944,000, indicating they certainly didn’t think she was pro-gun. The NRA anted up $5.1 million to help challenger Tillis . . . who won by a margin of 49-to-47.

A little further north, “The third congressional district race in Iowa is one of the most heated with respect to guns, with both Americans for Responsible Solutions and the NRA making six-figure buys for TV attack ads,” Hannah Levintova of Mother Jones told the anti-gun faithful back in October. The Republican candidate, David Young, helped block the Manchin-Toomey bill while working as Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) chief of staff.

On Nov. 4, Young defeated Democrat Staci Appel by more than 10 percentage points.

In Iowa’s tight U.S. Senate race, the NRA spent more money against Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley than on any other candidate this year, throwing its support behind Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst, a lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard, whose TV ad celebrating her background castrating hogs quickly went viral.

An NRA ad in Ernst’s support showed a mom putting her kids to bed and texting with her spouse, who’s on his way home from the airport. Suddenly an assailant breaks in, and the ad cuts to yellow police tape surrounding the crime scene as a narrator intones, “Bruce Braley voted to take away your gun rights.”

So Iowa voters took away Bruce Braley.

Gabby Giffords was representing Arizona’s 2nd congressional district when she was shot in the head during a public appearance in Tucson in January, 2011. Giffords’ “Americans for Responsible Solutions” spent more money ($1.8 million) defending Giffords’ former district director, incumbent Democratic Congressman Ron Barber, than it spent in any other race. Barber, who was also wounded in the 2011 mass shooting, was again challenged by Republican Martha McSally, who he defeated to win the seat in 2012.

On Nov. 4, Republican challenger McSally, who got only a reported $14,000 in help from the NRA, beat Democratic incumbent Barber, 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, a margin of 2,000 votes out of 178,612 cast.

All of which leaves us where?

Like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, gun owners should not pin too many hopes on GOP promises to “roll back” harm already done. Or do we believe the GOP is about to enact legislation to disband the unconstitutional BATF, while strongly recommending that manufacturers stop placing serial numbers on firearms, since that “only encourages registration”?

COMMUTING TO THE GUN STORE

The bad news in November was that Washington state voters fell victim to the aforementioned rhetoric about “closing the gun show loophole,” approving a ballot question peddled as merely requiring “background checks” on private sales.

In fact, the goal is nothing less than universal firearms registration.

By a whopping margin of 72-to-27, Alabama voters in November added a right to keep and bear arms to their state Constitution. But the press ignored that vote. It was the Washington state canvass — apparently the only gun-control measure on a statewide ballot this year — that garnered all the attention.

I-594, the Washington Universal Background Checks for Gun Purchases Initiative, was bankrolled by leftist billionaires including former New York City mayor Bloomberg (yes, him again) and former Microsoft execs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, reported Rachel Alexander at Townhall.com back on Oct. 20. “Thanks to them, the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility has raised nearly $9 million for the initiative this far, massively outspending the other side, which has raised only $1.3 million,” Alexander reported.

“I-594 has been cleverly drafted to sound like it merely makes small changes to gun laws, not a flat-out ban or gun registration scheme,” Alexander warned her readers, back in October. “This is why it is so dangerous. . . . In fact, polls show that even a majority of gun owners — 54 percent of the 35 percent of Washington residents who own a gun — are in favor of it.”

The 19-page initiative is so vague and confusing that former Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders warned it will be impossible to comply with. Gun owners will make honest mistakes, making it easy to prosecute them. Many will just give up trying to own a gun, he figures.

I-594 would prevent gun owners from transferring — even loaning — their guns to a family member (unless as a gift), private party, friend or anyone else. Instead, all transfers will have to go through a federally licensed dealer for a background check.

Limited exceptions are provided for transferring antique weapons or temporarily transferring “if necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to the transferee.” But “A woman who was afraid of a stalker better pray she fits under that definition, otherwise she could be prosecuted,” Alexander wrote. “By the time she purchases a firearm and goes through a background check, it might be too late for her safety.”

None of this was secret. Bob Owens at bearingarms.com warned voters: “I-594 would make it illegal for a grandfather to give his daughter a firearm to defend herself and her grandchildren from an abusive ex-husband.”

Twenty-six-year sheriff’s deputy Scott Brennan warned: “I want to loan my friend Gary my break-down shotgun for his motorcycle trip to Alaska. We (have to take a ferry) to the mainland, drive to Anacortes or Mt. Vernon, register the gun, Gary does the background check and we pay the ‘reasonable fee.’

“Ten days later we’re back and I get to ‘loan’ him the gun in front of the dealer. Gary has a great trip and comes back three weeks later. After he comes back, we all have to go back to the mainland, go back to the dealer and now I have to fill out the paperwork and pay the fee to be approved to get my own gun back.”

Similar nonsense would apply to a group of deputies wanting to surprise a retiring officer with a gun as a gift, Deputy Brennan warned.

“As a law enforcement officer, I know this is completely unenforceable. Unless a cop is hiding in your living room when you make the sale, gift or loan, no one will ever know it happened and it won’t help solve the problem.”

Up until voters swallowed I-594, Washington residents could purchase a pistol, rifle, or shotgun from another private party located within the state without going through a background check, provided the seller was not a federally licensed firearms dealer. “These are about the only ways someone can acquire a handgun without having the government become aware of the purchase,” warned Rachel Alexander. “I-594 would eliminate all of this.”

Do we really want our prisons further clogged with granddads who give a grandchild an heirloom gun without going through all the rigmarole described by Deputy Brennan?

There are virtually no prosecutions of convicted felons attempting to purchase firearms. Why? Because criminals steal their guns, or buy them in some dark alley far from the “yellow forms” of any licensed dealer.

Speaking out against I-594 in July, the NRA’s chief lobbyist in Washington state, Brian Judy referred to venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, who pledged $500,000 to back I-594 and who is Jewish. Judy was ridiculed by the leftists at Mother Jones for saying: “Now, he has put half-a-million dollars toward this policy, the same policy that led to his family getting run out of Germany by the Nazis. . . . It’s like any Jewish people that I meet who are anti-gun, I think, ‘Are you serious? Do you not remember what happened?'”

Apparently not. Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown” victim disarmament group spent $4 million pushing I-594, while the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ponied up a paltry $1 million.

To oppose the scam, the National Rifle Association reportedly spent $485,000.

I-594 was enacted by Washington voters on Nov. 4 by a margin of 59-to-40. How long do you think residents of that state will still possess enough militia weapons to resist a future tyranny — weapons, that is, not included on the government’s carefully compiled lists to be used when future confiscations “become necessary”?

Finally, in California’s 17th congressional district (Silicon Valley being so leftist that the race came down to two Democrats), incumbent Congressman Mike Honda, the character who wants to ban civilian possession of body armor in order to make sure cops and criminals alike can kill us with the first shot, held off a challenge by a slightly less draconian leftist, Rajesh Khanna, by a margin of 52-to-48.

Vin Suprynowicz wrote “Send in the Waco Killers” and “The Ballad of Carl Drega.” His new novel, “The Testament of James,” is due out this month.