I agree that a lot of extreme pro-gun folks are opposed to any and all sorts of compromise.
Can you specify any compromise offered to us by the gun grabbers in, say, the last 50 years, that wasn't of the form "we'll only take half of your arm off"?
Maybe the Firearms Owners Protection Act of '86, which had a poison pill ending sales of new machine guns to civilians? Nowadays lots of gun owners who weren't watching the BATF exterminate gun culture in the '70s and early-mid '80s say we shouldn't have accepted that deal for the precedent it established, which was furthered in "assault weapons" bans (prior to that there were no firearms technically banned from civilian ownership, even if NFA arms like machine guns had onerous acquisition regimes ... which the BATF is even now trying to make more onerous/impossible).
Stepping back a bit, after, oh, 81 years of bad faith (going back to the NFA of '34 which attempted a de facto ban on handgun transfers for all but the rich), might we be somewhat justified in not being willing to give up another fraction of an inch? Especially when we have members of our community like my father who remember how things used to be, without problems? (OK, he was 4 years old when it passed, but you get the idea, e.g. when he was in high school in mid-late '40s he and others would store their guns in their school lockers while attending to make hunting before or after more convenient, and "school shooting" were unheard of.)
81 years of bad faith? It's that kind of language that makes this difficult.
Onerous acquisition regimes were put in place for machine guns because of the psychopaths that were running from county to county gunning down law enforcement officers. That's the thing, the law in question wasn't a beachhead to take more of your stuff...they may have actually wanted to make sure that we didn't have a wave of new Machine Gun Kelly's running around.
Does your dad remember how it used to be for everyone or just people like you? I'm not trying to be too facetious, here. My dad mentions a time when you could take a sack of squirrels to the doctor for payment as an example of the good ole' days...but I don't think that's a good idea just because it worked for him and my grandfather. (Though I still like squirrel stew.)
Many, many, things are different between now and the 40
s including all of the weird social/psychological pressures that are at the root of many school shootings. Hell, when I was a kid I remember seeing people have deer rifles in their gun rack in their truck at school. (I was very little.) Would that be a good idea today? Surely, I don't have to answer that question...because things have changed. Radically.
What would be a place where we could compromise? Is it even possible? What's an area where you think there is some give and take on?
Can you specify any compromise offered to us by the gun grabbers in, say, the last 50 years, that wasn't of the form "we'll only take half of your arm off"?
Maybe the Firearms Owners Protection Act of '86, which had a poison pill ending sales of new machine guns to civilians? Nowadays lots of gun owners who weren't watching the BATF exterminate gun culture in the '70s and early-mid '80s say we shouldn't have accepted that deal for the precedent it established, which was furthered in "assault weapons" bans (prior to that there were no firearms technically banned from civilian ownership, even if NFA arms like machine guns had onerous acquisition regimes ... which the BATF is even now trying to make more onerous/impossible).
Stepping back a bit, after, oh, 81 years of bad faith (going back to the NFA of '34 which attempted a de facto ban on handgun transfers for all but the rich), might we be somewhat justified in not being willing to give up another fraction of an inch? Especially when we have members of our community like my father who remember how things used to be, without problems? (OK, he was 4 years old when it passed, but you get the idea, e.g. when he was in high school in mid-late '40s he and others would store their guns in their school lockers while attending to make hunting before or after more convenient, and "school shooting" were unheard of.)