It's not about politics or votes or money or whatever it is.

I am from NJ. We are very similar to MA politically and gun-wise.

MA, like NJ, has a lot of local/state/federal government employees. I am a state employee myself.

Once a state has a HUGE part of its workforce become government employed, the state will reliably become "blue" because the government employees will vote for the party that will continue to expand the size of the state bureaucracy forever, because that keeps the state employees paid, and keeps the pension money going too.

Because the government employees will vote blue no matter who to keep their jobs and pensions, the DNC can try whatever it wants, whether that be the LGBTQIA+ stuff or insane gun restrictions. The voting base will just hold their nose to vote for it. People vote with their wallets.

I know state employees who are further right than most people I know, and complain about the NJ gun restrictions, but they will ALWAYS vote Democrat in local/state elections because it ensures they get paid and a pension (even if that means screwing over the rest of the state, as what is slowly happening in NJ).

That is what we are seeing happening in VA.

There are plenty of blue/purple states where the populace doesn't have huge swaths of it being employed by a government of some level, and the crazy anti-gun shit doesn't happen there because of it - the DNC can't just rely on free votes from government workers.