If the Democratic Party has lost its edge on the issue of guns and gun violence, that would represent a political sea change.

As the news broke yesterday of a third ambush-style attack on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in as many months, Democrats, including those who have spent months describing ICE as an extralegal “secret police force,” blamed the violence on the ubiquity of guns in America.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was among them. “I don’t know what’s happened here and I don’t know about the guns, but we need better laws on guns,” he improvised in a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “I mean, we got something done a few years ago, but it’s just rampant. And we have to do more.” Indeed, “It’s become almost every day one of these things happen.”

This is a mantra — a catechism to which Democrats appeal when acts of obvious political violence cannot plausibly be attributed to the right. We know that to be the case because when acts of political violence can be linked to right, Democrats and their allies in the media do not hesitate to spell out the truth as they see it. The obfuscation to which Schumer appealed is, however, an instrument of political utility that may no longer be as effective as it once was.

It’s just one poll, so take it with a grain of salt. But if the Democratic Party has lost its edge on the issue of guns and gun violence, that would represent a political sea change.

In the last decade, voters could generally be counted on to tell pollsters that they supported new restrictions on gun ownership to curb violence and gun crime. Even if their voting patterns did not reflect their preferences as reflected in public opinion surveys, the public was still willing to express support for what they thought was the right opinion on guns. If the polling has caught up with the preferences that are revealed through electoral outcomes, that should affect Democrats’ thinking on this issue.

But it would be charitable to accuse Senator Schumer of thinking in this case. His was an instinctual reaction, an effort to escape from a political trap. It just seems like it’s not going to play out as Democratic partisans might expect it would.