I'm headed out for holiday relative-wrangling, but a quick thought before I go. The American Revolution was fought with many privately owned weapons. Those privately owned weapons helped make this nation possible, and one of the first things the British tried to do was confiscate weapons. I'm not comparing the utility of modern civilian weapons against a modern military, I am just pointing out historical fact.
It means that if you "go after guns", you are literally messing with a national tradition, one which in many eyes is enshrined in law with a precedence only slightly less than freedom of speech and freedom of religion. You might as well be trying to ban the 4th of July.
You may not agree with this, and think this tradition or aspect of the constitution needs to be changed, but polls show a minimum of a third of all households in America have a gun (Gallup says 47%, Nate Silver says 42%). Repeatedly count one, two, three as you drive down a suburban street sometime. It adds up. And by the Gallup numbers, 40% of those gun-containing households are filled with Democrats. So, while gun owners are a distinct minority here at DKos, this paucity does not hold for liberals as a whole.
Do not let the small number of gun owners here make you forget that 3 or 4 out of each 10 Democratic households have a gun in them. When you make a blanket statement about gun owners as "gun nuts", having a "gun fetish" or "being soaked in the blood of the innocent", you are also applying those terms to tens of millions of liberals and progressives.
You do not go against tradition lightly, and you do not cram opposition to it down people's throats and expect it to be supported. Genuine change of this magnitude has to come from within, else it is seen as the very tyranny the tradition opposes.
Consider it as you debate the issue.