I personally have never heard of a gun control advocate who thought that federal laws aren't important. I think the problem is that gun control advocates would dearly love to pass a federal gun control law, but there is no bloody way to get it through Congress. (And if you did somehow miraculously pass the bill, and if the president signed it into law, the NRA would get it delayed in court for as long as they possibly could, and god knows what the courts would do with it. But mostly the problem is passing the damn bill.)