Everyone wants to have dialogue, work with each others and compromise, or at least that's the paradigm or political cooperation that we're meant to aspire to in a representative democracy. After all, if we ignore the minority, we end up with mob rule. Supposedly.
But is that true when it comes to guns?
My answer is and always will be, no.
Gun owners and the lobbyists representing their interests refuse to budge on even the most meaningless gun control reform. People LOVE to blame the NRA, but you'll notice that gun owners haven't publicly been denouncing the NRA en masse. The may lament the hard line the NRA takes, but mostly they just keep their mouths shut and buy more guns.
So we're stuck in a situation, much like with the GOP in Congress, where one side is willing to compromise, and work with the other, but the other is completely unwilling to compromise or stand up to the extremists in their ranks.. and we see how that plays out. The extremists control the group and compromise is a non-starter.
So, again I ask, should we aspire to work with gun owners to solve gun violence?
The question is akin to asking if we should work with the Freedom Caucus to fix the nation's problems. Anyone think that will work?
In addition to that, any gun reforms that might pass Congress and the Senate, with the support of gun owners, will not be bold enough to have a meaningful impact on gun violence. They will set the bar SO LOW that the impact will be as close to zero as is possible.
Haven't we learned this with Obama? How many times has he compromised and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory? Like Sanders says we need to control all branches of the government if we want REAL change, precisely because trying to reach a compromise with extremists is impossible.
And gun owners, as a group, are extremists. Individuals within the group may be ok, and sure there some "ok" Republicans, but as a group, if they won't budge an inch they're not serious about compromise.
And - of course - the complete unwillingness for "responsible" gun owners to take control of the NRA, etc., or at least stand up to them, has left them in an unenviable position; at some point in the future the left will have a lot more control in the US and when that happens the government will eventually come for some of your guns, because the situation as it stands is untenable. And the only other alternative is that gun owners compromise, and that's not going to happen.