No. I'm not saying this! I think the number of people who don't want to reduce gun violence is small enough that we can ignore them.
The question is, what are you willing to do, what are you willing to sacrifice, in order to reduce gun violence?
And this is where the problem lies. The more extreme gun advocates are unwilling to even allow for background checks that can't be easily bypassed with loopholes (as you point out, current background checks don't seem to be doing the job), or legislation that would prevent people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns. They're against waiting periods or training requirements. They're against tighter regulations and licensing. It's not about banning guns. I agree with you that banning guns is a non-starter. But the question is, what are they actually willing to do??? Because vague allusions to mental health and video games aren't cutting it.
As I said, the only problem that is unique to America is the access to guns. Not mental health issues, not video games, not violent movies. Guns. The resistance to acknowledging this incredibly simple fact is directly leading to dead Americans.
So yeah, it's simply not possible to be "both-sided" on this. I freely admit that I don't understand the "my cold dead hands" side of the pro-gun argument. But that's because it doesn't align with reality.
Guns assure you freedom from whom? The US government? You think a rag-tag militia of Boogaloo Boys is going overthrow the US military if things go sideways? This was likely naive in 1776. But now? It's laughable. Guns are a way for people to feel like badasses and pretend that they're going to defend their "land and their woman" when the apocalypse comes. And fine. I'm not one to deny people their fantasies. But the reality is, the person most likely to be shot by a gun is the owner or a member of their family.
If there were more people talking about enhanced background checks and red flag laws, there would be a lot fewer people talking about banning guns. This is the dynamic that's missing. Snsible people want to see concrete efforts to do something,. If those efforts work, the people arguing to ban guns will have less grounds to do so. But when mass shootings are increasing, alongside a rise in violent ideology and mental health issues, saying "but I'm a law abiding gun owner so why should anything change for me?" is just not good enough.
The best thing gun advocates could do to stop this "ban guns" talk, is push for measures that make it harder for people to commit mass shootings. To actually demonstrate that they want to reduce gun violence instead of getting indignant at the the observation that they don't behave as if they do.
