It’s so easy to be cynical, especially when it comes to gun safety legislation.

If the deaths of innocent six and seven-year-olds couldn’t move the needle on enacting common sense gun regulations, nothing will. At least that was the mantra up until the Parkland Florida mass shooting.

Call me a crazy optimist, but I sense something different this time around. There is a sense of outrage and disgust that, I believe, will last long after the latest gun tragedy is no longer headline news.

In a new CNN/SSRS poll taken in the week after the horrific massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, nearly three quarters of respondents said they favored stricter gun laws. CNN reports that the mind-boggling results suggest that support for more gun control in America is at its highest level since 1993.

CNN goes on to say:

Overall, 70% now say they back stricter gun laws, up from 52% who said so in an October poll not long after a mass shooting in Las Vegas killed 58 people. Just 27% oppose stricter laws.  Bumps in support for tighter laws following mass shootings have rarely lasted, but they have also rarely been as large as the shift seen in this poll.

What is different about the latest mass shooting and prior massacres is they didn’t have the survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School!

These fearless, and articulate, kids are not going to let their ordeal be swept under the rug by the National Rifle Association and its apologists. The gun group that usually plays offense after similar tragedies is suddenly finding itself on defense.

Americans of all political persuasions are pushing companies to cut ties with the powerful gun lobby. Gun-reform activists are targeting not weapons makers, but banks, rental car agencies, airlines, insurers and other companies with ties to the NRA.

And the new tactic is working!

“Americans have had it,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group that calls for gun law reform. “This feels like a different energy level,” she added.

The battle to defeat the NRA will be difficult and long, but it feels to me … and to many others … we may have finally turned the corner towards enacting some common sense gun regulations.

There actually may come a day when an “A” from the NRA will no longer be seen as a badge of honor by politicians, but one of shame.

Photo | abcactionnews.com