WASHINGTON – After a significant year for the gun control movement in 2018, momentum for stricter firearms laws in states across the country likely will accelerate this year.

In states where Democrats made big gains in the November elections, lawmakers are quickly moving legislation to raise the buying age for guns and to ban assault-style weapons. Other measures, including bills to limit gun access for domestic abusers and people who may harm themselves or others, have increasing bipartisan support.

The conversation about guns is changing, said Robert Spitzer, a professor of political science at the State University of New York College at Cortland and the author of five books on gun control.

"There's been a flood of new legislation," he said. "With more state legislatures in Democratic hands, with the sense you can enforce new gun laws and it not be a stigma, there's not only momentum but concrete evidence that those who want to see stronger gun laws are making headway."

Already this year, lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced at least 50 major gun control bills, including measures to expand background checks and ban lethal accessories like bump stocks, according to a count by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control organization co-founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who survived a 2011 shooting.

To be sure, Republicans who still control most state legislatures likely will pass gun rights legislation. At least 26 state bills would significantly expand gun access, according to the Giffords Law Center.

North Dakota, for example, is moving a bill to boost school security using armed guards, and several other states are following suit.

But student survivors of the February 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead helped galvanize a national movement for stricter gun laws. In 2018, 27 state legislatures passed 67 new laws aimed at restricting access to guns.

In the six years prior, states had enacted nearly 600 gun laws, and nearly two-thirds of those were backed by the National Rifle Association, according to data compiled by Stateline.

That shift played out in the November midterms, when federal and statewide candidates promising gun control won in red and blue states. Lawmakers will carry that momentum into the new legislative session.

Gun industry officials recognize the changing political landscape. Larry Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an advocacy group representing the firearms and ammunition industry, said the next year of gun-related legislation will be "a mixed bag."

"It comes as a surprise to no one that Democrat-controlled statehouses are less advantageous to the firearms industry," he said. "We'll see more restrictive gun laws, but we might see improvement to right-to-carry laws in other states in the country."

Keane later added, "People have been writing about the demise of the Second Amendment for a long time. Politics ebbs and flows."

State efforts to pass "red flag" laws this year are especially likely to succeed, said Nico Bocour, the state legislative director at the Giffords Law Center. Such measures allow family, household members, or local law enforcement officials to petition for a court order allowing police to seize weapons from people who they think might harm themselves or others.

Last year, eight states enacted such laws. Five of those were signed by Republican governors. Now, lawmakers of both parties in nearly a dozen states are considering similar legislation.