I'm far less certain that restrictive laws would necessarily creep across state lines.
New York's Sullivan law has been around since 1911. The state as a whole has had pretty draconian handgun laws for as long as I can remember - that'd be the '60's
95 years and they haven't managed to export the paranoia across a relatively skinny lake Champlain to Vermont.
There was a time when every new experimental educational protocol in California spread like wildfire into flyover country. Unless I am very much mistaken, those days are gone.
We've already had an AWB that came and went offering no discernable difference between the time it was in effect and not. We can rely on politicians and the media to forget but we'll remind them: we tried it; it didn't do anything other than sell a bunch of guns.
A number of states have gone "shall issue". New handgun controls will be difficult to pass in any of these. The antis are in a position of having to roll back our gains before they can get to the chewy center.
Tilting at "assault weapons" and BMGs is the result of failing miserably at their primary goal of banning handguns. The fight shifts. Still, I don't see California's issues on EBR's having any more effect than New York's defacto handgun not-quite-a-ban (permit required to
purchase).
Hopefully, the handgunners and shotgunners won't throw the EBR / BMG crowd under the bus in a manner reminiscent of 1994. I doubt it though: hard not to notice the similarities between the ban dejour and one's duck gun. I really wish Brady and VPC had been more vocal about Cheney's accident - coud've done more to mobilize the shotgunners than any other single event.
Personally, I think another AWB would need some blood for the pols to dance in. I wonder how easy it is to sleep at night knowing your cause can't be advanced without someone killing a bunch of school kids? Ghoulish way to live one's life.