by Joe Waldron

I had a long telephone conversation this morning with a political party county chairman from another state. He opened the conversation with, “Why can’t you guys moderate your stance? It would help more of us get elected.”

“What would you suggest,” I responded.

“Well, every little gun law doesn’t mean they’re coming to take away our guns,” he went on. “It just makes us look like extremists. And I don’t really believe they’re after our guns anyway. I own two shotguns and a 9mm—and I don’t think they want to disarm me.”

Where to begin?

Do we cite the history of gun control in America: an incremental and ever increasing loss of what was once viewed as a near-absolute right? Or the fact that it’s a one-way street? Or that the operative word in “gun control” is “control?” Whether it’s control of freed slaves in the post-Civil War South? Or control of poor southern and eastern European immigrants in the Northeast a few decades later? Or control of angry, unemployed World War I vets called “Bonus Marchers” in 1932

Eroding Rights
And to come full circle, we could cite the Gun Control Act of 1968, and how the real target of that act was the ban on the mail-order sale of guns, guns that Congress feared would end up arming disenfranchised and disheartened African-Americans in our major cities in the mid-1960s.

We could explain that there is no intellectual honesty on the other side of the gun control debate. Whether it’s Sarah Brady saying, “Just pass the Brady Act and I can go home knowing I’ve made America a safer place.” And four months after Brady passed, there was Sarah, along with Charles Schumer and Joe Biden, out on the Capitol steps calling for passage of Brady II.

Or California Sen. Diane Feinstein, offering a guaranteed list of 450 “good guns” safe from banning, if only the Senate would pass her so-called assault weapon ban—she would never have gotten the needed votes without that “safe gun list.” Several years later, we have that same Sen. Feinstein seeking to ban additional guns—guns on the Feinstein-certified “good gun list.”

We could explain that waiting periods that begin with two or three days soon become five, or 15. Or that under a “needs-based” licensing system, bureaucrats soon determine that only they and their friends have a legitimate “need.” Or that none of these laws has any impact on crime or criminals; they only serve to deny law-abiding citizens access to a constitutionally-guaranteed right.

These are the people we’re supposed to negotiate with in good faith?

But let’s be reasonable. Let’s talk about it.

Compromise?
Politics is the art of compromise. That bit of wisdom is passed out just after election day at every “new legislator orientation” in the country. According to my dictionary, “compromise” is defined as “a settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.”

Is that how gun control works?

Not yet, it hasn’t. With rare exceptions, compromise in the gun control area means “I want all of your rights, but I’m willing to compromise and only take half today.” Or “one third. . . .” Or “one fourth. . . .”

Sorry, folks. That doesn’t cut it. Not any more.

I’ll be happy to sit across the table from you and discuss gun control. After all, reasonable people can be civil and discuss things rationally, right? Right.

But understand that when you come to the table, for every new gun control law you propose, you’d better be willing to repeal an older one as well.

For every existing gun control law you want to expand, you’d better be willing to narrow another existing law.

Compromise is a two-way street. If you want something from me, you’d better be willing to give something of equal value in return. Otherwise there’s no incentive for me to talk with you. I’m just being reasonable, after all.

What’s that? That’s not what this discussion is about? Not narrowing restrictions on gun ownership, just expanding them?

Now who’s the extremist? Now who’s not being reasonable?

The author, Joe Waldron, is the executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the nation’s second largest gun rights advocacy group.