That may be what you're hearing, but what you're actually doing is nothing to fix it. Literally nothing. Show me the bill where fixing NICS was introduced, brought to a vote, and failed? Show me anything at all done to improve the situation in any way in the last twenty years?
Total abdication of responsibility does not lend credence to the "responsible gun ownership is fine." Like I said, I was 100% a defender of the second amendment until I realized that all of the arguments are so much horseshit. It's just more important to you to be able to go down to the range and fire off a few rounds than it is to prevent the wholesale slaughter of children.
You've done NOTHING. You will never support any reasonable measure, because "give 'em an inch." So fuck it, take all the guns. Make it illegal to own a gun. At this point, there is no such thing as a responsible gun owner in this country. You're all biting your noses off to spite your face.
I'd like to address these thoughts. As usual, I'll take a step back and write a long winded explanation, so apologies ahead of time :-).
I've been having continued discussions about the topic of gun control with a friend of mine. When we discussed the topic and I was bringing up some of our discussions on here about my frustrations with people saying, I want to ban this or that "blanket statement" without defining what it was, he said, they're getting frustrated because you're concerned about hardware details and they're concerned about people's lives. He was intentionally trying to dig at me a little/he's also legitimately on the other side of this issue than me (not an extremist, but more pro-gun control than I am). What he said got me to thinking, though.
That is what it seems like is being presented on this topic with the narrative of (at least some) gun control people on this issue. I want people talking about this issue to learn about it and define what they want, preferably with logical ties to how it would actually help. The push back I get is evidenced most clearly in this bit of demagoguery in your posts about "F you, I'd take away all of your rights (in regards to self defense with guns) if I could, and blanket statements such as "there's no such thing as a responsible gun owner in this country." Now I'm not saying this extremism is representative of everyone, just that it highlights a thought process that is, I believe, underlying many gun control arguments. The example is the perspective my friend said, "you're caring about nuances, hardware, details - they're caring about lives of people." The unstated feeling behind all of this is, I have the moral high ground if I'm pro-gun control because I care about people's lives and you don't care about people's lives as much as you do your philosophical perspective on rights, so I don't have to be as detail oriented on things, I don't have to come up with solutions, I don't have to etc. etc. Well, the fact of the matter is, most pro-gun people I know do care about lives. The perspective is just caring about protecting the lives of people in their family if something terrible were to happen or of people they see in public if they're carrying concealed and something bad were to happen. They legitimately care about lives too and has been said numerous times, the statistics are not behind any of this. No one is likely to be shot or to shoot someone else in defense. It's just not likely to happen, but it doesn't mean pro gun people don't care about lives. So no, I will not cede to you your moral high ground and condescension of people who are pro guns. You don't get to act (at least unchallenged) like you're on the saintly path, so you can ignore learning about an issue and proposing rational and logically justified ideas because you're just so much better than all the ignorant gun owners/supporters. Because news flash, you don't have the moral high ground. I don't have the moral high ground. There's perspectives on both sides. Both people are wanting lives to be saved, they just see it in different ways. If you're wanting to change the status quo, you need to propose some ideas on how to do it.
To address the other side of things - the accusation of a lack of willingness to do anything. You comment something like "oh, everyone who is pro guns obviously doesn't want to do anything at all" and then act like it's all their fault if nothing gets done that you feel needs to get done. Well, let's get down to the details. What do you want the average gun guy to do? They're not dictator of this country. If they truly support gun rights, should they vote for a person who is for restrictions well beyond what they feel are effective or necessary just so they can "be doing something?" I don't believe anyone on here supporting gun rights has literally proposed nothing be done. Ideas have been brought up by pro-gun people too. Maybe you don't feel they're strong enough or good enough, but they are at least proposed ideas (hopefully) in good faith by the people on the board that you are bluntly deriding. These may not be the "reasonable measures" that you feel should happen, and nothing may actually get passed through congress, but again, you can sit on your high horse and act the martyr that has tried and failed to find any rational sense in any person you've ever talked to in your whole life who supports a person's rights to own even a black powder musket (I mean, hey, you're the one talking everything in absolutes), but that's not going to actually accomplish any exchange of dialogue or ideas.
I wasn't talking absolutes in 1999. I wasn't talking absolutes in 2005. I wasn't talking absolutes in 2009 or 2012 or 2015. I'm talking absolutes now.
What do I expect them to do? Anything.
Have the gun manufacturers done anything to make sure their guns aren't used in crimes? No.
Gun rights person's response: Well they don't have to do that!
My response: That's correct. They do not have a legal obligation to do that. But every person who values the right to own a gun should be fucking insist they do it, and refuse to purchase from those that don't.
If the argument is essentially "we don't need a law" just know that all of the ideas that support that argument, all of the philosophy behind it, are born of the American experiment that people can govern themselves. In this case, the entire group engaged in the sales/distribution of fireams has failed to govern themselves. Where the perpetrators of this shit were thwarted from purchasing firearms legally, it was exclusively the result of legislation that was opposed by the NRA.
And then when any sort of legislation is proposed, as a completely constitutional way of forcing the distributors of firearms to behave in a way that any free-thinking person can see is totally reasonable, the "they're coming to take our guns" crowd argues against the entirely non-existent goal of gun control folks.
So I've had it. I'm done. They didn't want to talk about solutions and they aren't engaging with the argument in an honest way. Every argument hinges on that right, and as they like to point out, we're a nation of laws, not one where people can govern themselves and so are often left to do just that. So those laws are enacted in a certain way, and one of them is an amendment to the constitution, lets strip that amendment out.
And fucking take their guns.
Right now, it's not a serious policy position, and hasn't been for the last couple hundred years. But it gets brought up in these conversations by the gun right's folks. Nobody WAS suggesting stripping YOUR ability to own a gun and shoot it for legally and morally acceptable reasons. But then you totally failed to rectify this situation on your own. So now I'm proposing it, and it's enough of an issue that I'll switch my vote to whichever candidate supports it. I can say that with confidence that it will never change my vote, because it isn't a thing anyone is actually trying to do. But gun rights people will continue to insist that this possibility is why they "cannot give an inch." It's also why they won't think of anything as a compromise, because they've forgotten the whole deal with having the right in the first place is that they would be responsible about it. That responsibility includes holding each other accountable.
If after Columbine no gun owner in the U.S. ever purchased a Stevens again, other manufacturers would have taken note of that. Instead, hardly anything is as good for business as one of their weapons being involved in a mass shooting. Out of fears that the weapon will soon be banned, gun enthusiasts rush out to buy it. The maker of Stevens, Savage, also produced one of the weapons used by the Sandy Hook asshole. His other weapon of choice was made by Bushmaster Firearms International. If after even one of these incidents those people in this country that care about the right to own guns boycotted a manufactuer, you'd have 100% never-false-fail biometrics on every gun made in the U.S. within a year. Or some other workable solution.
There's no push to protect the right from the people with a vested interest in protecting the right, that's what they aren't seeing, that's what they don't get. And one at a time, people without a vested interest in that right are converted to the realization that those folks honestly do not give a shit. They just can't be bothered, their right is constitutionally protected so go fuck yourself.
I am not taking the moral high ground here, there's nothing moral about the right to own a gun, there's nothing immoral about the right to own a gun. Rights are something that should only be curtailed due to gravest need.
At its heart, this is an issue of personal responsibility. And all of our efforts to curtail access to firearms to those that are incapable or unwilling to exercise personal responsibility are met with resistance from groups like the NRA. Those that refuse to govern themselves will find government forced upon them. That's just how it goes.