Let New York be a lesson to us all.

"Gun lobby had its silencer on last week."

Thousands of firearm owners turned out at “Gun Appreciation Day” rallies across the state on Saturday, denouncing Gov. Cuomo and decrying his new gun control law. It was a surprising spectacle, considering that in the weeks and days leading up to the Legislature’s passage of the sweeping reform bill last week, ardent Second Amendment supporters were nowhere to be seen.

“It goes against past experience,” Assemblyman Micah Kellner, a Manhattan Democrat who voted for the bill, said of the pro-gun paradox in Albany. “There was plenty of time to be there and be heard.”

A few dozen workers from the upstate Remington gun manufacturing plant trekked to Albany to demonstrate, no doubt worried about their jobs. But otherwise the absence of protestors at the Capitol was particularly astonishing, given the gun lobby’s vow to rile up its troops once it became clear in December that Cuomo was pushing for speedy passage of an expansion of the state’s assault weapons ban and a limit on the size of ammunition magazines, among other measures.

The turnout was in stark contrast to the gay marriage debate of two years ago, when the Capitol’s hallways were clogged with advocates on both sides of the issue as the Legislature considered the legalization proposal it was destined to approve.

And, earlier this month, it was hard to miss the hundreds of anti-hydrofracking protesters who lined a Capitol-plaza concourse that lawmakers had to use to reach the venue for Cuomo’s State of the State address.

Thomas King, who is head of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and a member of the National Rifle Association’s national board, was one of those who promised a major pushback against Cuomo’s drive to curb gun violence. Explaining the lobby’s misfire of advocacy, he said many gun owners couldn’t give up a day of work to come to the Capitol.

“Yes, we’re all in favor of doing whatever it takes to support the Second Amendment, but these guys have to work,” he said. “It’s not like the unions who get paid to go to Albany to protest. It’s tough for them to get out during the week.”

He said gun owners “trusted in their legislators who had always supported them in the past, the Republican Senate, to continue to do so.”