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This was exactly the situation of let's say gay marriage where the support in 80s and 90s was only 10% with huge part of the population opposing. The activists were not against using state courts and ultimately in 2015 even SCOTUS decision to ram that thing through many times without gay marriage actually having a popular support. Then all it took was several decades of culture waring and suddenly it is now a new normal. Similar things happened also in Europe, often it was using literal slippery slope such as in Austria where they approved of registered partnership only for Austrian constitutional court to decree that existence of registered partnership was basically unconstitutional and discriminatory and that it should be turned into gay marriage with everything including adoptions etc. No popular vote or law passed specifically to turn this millennia old institution.
Recently I am actually a huge fan of this tactic, the left used it all the time: do not be afraid to be brazen. Ask for ability to privately own tanks and missile systems and then just meet in the middle with the left to allow machine guns and RPGs. I think that there is also additional value there even if you are not that much of a pro-gun person - just by focusing on this topic it takes energy out of other stuff so you can go after other things such as gay marriage or education or some such. Additionally wage open legal warfare by every means possible even on topics that are supposedly settled, and also wage culture war. Do not be afraid to infiltrate and turn around existing movement - e.g. homeschooling movement that started as countercultural hippie thing was basically taken over by religious right by 1990s. Things like that.
It seems like a pipedream now, but I think it can be quite successful. I think something similar happened with COVID - I think that the "antivaxx" supposed extremes really blunted some of the actually extreme things that happened around the world. I believe that the politicians genuinely feared them such as when street riots in Netherlands prevented more fascist vaccine passports, Canadian convoy definitely sped up cancelling lockdowns in some states and it actually even worked in China where they reverted their longstanding Zero COVID policies. These "extremists" and "crazies" are often the unsung heroes of rightist causes, such as recently with multidecade win in Roe vs Wade or pushback against trans agenda. The left realizes that they can accommodate them, and they actually even openly sung songs to them and they turn it to eleven. Crazies are now mainstream and they accommodate even outright terrorist such as Weathermen and find safe haven for them at universities and think-tanks.
The gay marriage people were part of the juggernaut that held the institutions. The Second Amendment people do not; in fact, the institutions oppose them. Even conservative institutions (aside from specifically 2nd amendment ones) aren't pro-gun.
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