I mean, it worked for the Black Panthers, and they weren’t even trying to get gun control laws put in place.

For the unaware, modern gun control laws basically started with the Black Panthers. During the civil rights movement, peaceful protests would get violently busted by the cops. But people quickly noticed that heavily armed protests would have the cops politely watching from across the street. (Turns out, cops are way less likely to fire into a crowd when the entire crowd can immediately return fire.) So the Black Panthers started arming themselves, to keep the cops from shutting down their protests.

When Republican lawmakers realized that the cops weren’t going to shut down the heavily armed protests on their front lawns, they got really fucking sweaty, really fucking fast. So conservatives pushed the Mulford Act, which was (at the time) the most restrictive gun control law the country had ever seen. It was authored by Ronald Reagan (yes, the same Reagan that the right upholds as a paragon of conservative values) and endorsed by the NRA, (yes, the same NRA that lobbies for looser gun control in the wake of mass school shootings.) All because the wrong people had guns.

The goal of the Mulford Act was to criminalize gun ownership, so the cops could bust individual protesters after the fact, instead of needing to break up an entire protest as it was happening. And it basically set the stage for modern gun control laws. The cops would follow individual protesters home, and kick in their front door while they were having dinner with their family the next evening. This is ironically what led to the Black Panthers becoming so militant, as they implemented anti-espionage tactics to protect the group. Code names, so busted members wouldn’t be able to positively identify other members by name. Segmented information, so a busted member (even a high ranking member) wouldn’t be able to compromise an entire protest. Randomized meeting locations, so cops couldn’t set up stings ahead of time. Etc, etc… It took them from “the people who really like guns and peacefully protest with them for self defense” to “a full blown armed guerrilla-protest group.”