History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes; lessons from 2004 re: the gun issue.

[benEzra]

22. That was understood as pandering to the zealots; he made no real moves against gun owners.

The indiscriminate, hate-filled exploitation of the tragedy at Sandy Hook was when the "banic" occurred, when store shelves were cleared of ammo and AR production backlogged for a year, and when the die was cast for the loss of the Senate in 2014. And I would say that it wasn't Obama who was really responsible for it; it was mostly the corporate media (hate sells, via rageclicks and rage-shares on social media), plus a few hateful sound bites and draconian legislative proposals from a small set of Senate and House members, but mostly gun control activists on social media---and of course the NY SAFE Act. All I remember Obama actually doing was to express his dislike for people owning modern-looking guns, and much later the BATFE floating a half-baked proposal to ban M855 ammo that was later withdrawn as unworkable; the rest was basically restating and pledging to enforce existing law.

And the NRA is ~5 million members, compared to 12-15 million carry license holders, ~25-30 million "assault weapon" owners, ~60 million "high capacity magazine" owners, and ~100 million gun owners. What the NRA thinks, says, or does is not nearly as important to grassroots gun rights activism as gun-control activists seem to think.

You do realize I'm not an NRA member, right?

Were the NRA to disappear tomorrow, the gun control landscape wouldn't change in the slightest. You'd still run squarely against the fact that tens of millions of engaged, thoughtful, and highly motivated Americans own guns, and will keep them. You can accept that fact and look for common ground with the people you seem to hate but (realistically) have to coexist with, or the party can keep supporting useless, offensive crap like handgrip and magazine bans and carry-license harassment, and keep getting the same pushback.

The Third Way has been pushing to outlaw rifle handgrips for a frakking quarter century now, and so far they have achieved:

-- Mostly-ignored cosmetic bans in ~7 states, despite extreme penalties;
-- Record gun and ammo sales nearly every year for the last two decades;
-- Modern-looking rifles now dominate rifle ownership and the shooting sports;
-- Half a billion over-10-round magazines in U.S. homes;
-- Republican control of most state legislatures;
-- Republican control of the House and Senate;
-- President Trump.

Quite a track record. On the upside, rifle violence is now at historic lows...