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There will almost certainly be an aspect of the National Rifle Association's convention — which opens today in Houston — that feels like a victory celebration. By organizing and agitating its members, the organization was able to kill a Senate compromise on background checks, steamrolling over an ineffectual Organizing For Action. But as discussion of reviving that deal heats up, the NRA may finally face a real roadblock: public opinion.

Prior to the April 17th vote — which failed to end a Republican-led filibuster on a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks — there were certainly coordinated organizing efforts. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Michael Bloomberg's group, launched a series of ads targeting wavering senators. (The group will also be outside the NRA convention today with survivors of gun violence.) The general expectation was that such efforts would be complemented by the sort of grass-roots push for which the Obama campaign — and, by extension, the evolutionary Organizing For Action — was known.

That didn't happen. Politico has an underwhelming review of OFA's efforts leading up to the vote, the sort of key priority of the president's that the group was designed to push. In short, OFA was a non-factor.

Built on the neighbor-to-neighbor model that helped win two presidential campaigns, OFA at first consisted of professional staff based in Chicago and Washington directing volunteers while retaining control over the message, outreach and Obama’s vaunted e-mail list. But the limits of the all-volunteer army quickly became apparent: even ardent Obama fans couldn’t make a strong push for him on the off-time from their regular jobs, and they didn’t have the resources to mount the kind of field or messaging operation that made the 2012 such a juggernaut.

Politico points to key people in states where Democratic senators voted to kill the compromise. In North Dakota, one was busy working at a car dealership. In Montana, the lack of a gas reimbursement kept an organizer from prowling the rural state. In Alaska, Obama's former state director said simply, "I haven’t heard of anyone who is interested" in volunteering. OFA's promise to punish senators who balked has been similarly fruitless.