There is no sensible gun owner political bloc.

[rrneck]

28. The NRA represents its membership.

Why would you assume the rest of gun owners care about the NRA one way or the other? Who are you to tell anybody to "step the fuck up"? If you see a problem, solve it, and people will follow you. Do you really think such an arrogant attitude will build a political coalition? Do you really think demanding people do something just because you told them to will compel them to do anything other than dislike you?

Has it occurred to you that gun owners have already dealt with the "problem"? They dealt with it by buying a gun. "The problem" isn't "gun violence". It isn't some statistical or ideological abstraction. It isn't some political scrum or media creation for ratings. The problem that people are dealing with, whether they decide to buy a gun or not, is a disparity of force between an assailant and a victim. It's not some ill defined group of people reduced to statistics or a set of improper attitudes about proper public comportment but the reality of a particular event in people's lives that has affected them for about two million years. Sometimes people attack one another. When the attack happens it doesn't matter who or why, it has to be dealt with. Some people buy a gun as part of a strategy to deal with that eventuality, others don't. If you don't want people to have guns, offer them a better solution. But here's a tip: Behaving like an arrogant ass is the wrong way to go about it.