WOW: Guns to surpass car accidents as leading cause of deaths among young people

[DanTex]

190. We've tried your approach, it hasn't worked.

We already offered the Republicans the chance to vote on background checks alone, and it failed. You don't seem to remember that. So the whole idea of trying to appease the right wing of the GOP by not talking about things that might offend them hasn't worked.

I think our general approaches to politics are different. It's not just about guns. The country has drifted to the right over the last few decades. Your opinion seems to be that the Dems should drift even further to the right, in order to not alienate the right wing of the GOP and try and seize the middle. But we've already been trying that, and it doesn't work. When the Dems move to the right, the GOP just moves further to the right, and then the "middle" move to the right also.

A great example is you describing Obama's gun bill as "draconian". This is the same kind of hyperbole that calls raising the minimum wage "socialism" and Obamacare "death panels". Nobody in their right mind can seriously think that this bill, which would still leave the US with by far the loosest gun laws in the civilized world, is "draconian".

But the GOP gets away with this kind of rhetoric because Dems keep letting them move the center to the right. If single-payer healthcare was part of the discussion, then everyone would understand that Obamacare was actually a very mild, even conservative plan. The GOP is very good at shaping the debate in their favor. Look at the budget discussion. The only question has been how much to cut.

So, in short, no, I absolutely disagree that the way to get to better gun policy is to concede everything to the GOP before the negotiations even begin. National licensing and registration should be part of the discussion. Sure, it will really annoy about 10% of Americans who value their guns more than anything else. But, as I keep repeating, most Americans think this is a good idea. Those 10% aren't voting for Democrats anyway.