Every day, social media is filled with people swearing up and down that they don’t want to ban all guns, they just want to make a few “common sense” restrictions. “No one is coming for your guns,” they say. Of course, then they get belligerent when you show them the myriad of people who do want to come and take away your guns.

But either way…

The NRA’s Chris Cox has been having a tough time of it. His home was vandalized and the anti-gunners protested outside his wife’s place of business. Yet he is maintaining his staunch support of the Second Amendment.

Writing for America’s First Freedom, Cox points out the primary reason why so many of us in the pro-gun community refuse to back down.

“The notion that I, or Hillary, or Democrats, or whoever you want to choose, are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true—and I don’t care how many times the NRA says it.”

—Barack Obama, June 1, 2016

The former president’s statement was a lie when he said it. Less than a year earlier, the 44th president had lauded Great Britain and Australia’s confiscatory gun control policies.

Like Obama, the more clever anti-gun activists, eager to curry favor with moderate Americans, have sought to assure the public that they seek only minor, “reasonable” or “common-sense” changes to current policy. According to these con artists, they only want to restrict a small subset of extremely dangerous firearms or keep firearms away from unpopular demographics.

What these gun controllers don’t tell you is that the guns they want to ban are yours, whether that is an AR-15, a pump-action shotgun or a .38 revolver. The unsavory demographic they want to prohibit from owning firearms is made up of law-abiding Americans. Aside from being bad policy on their own merits, each incremental step that Americans acquiesce to facilitates the next and brings gun control advocates closer to their ultimate goal of civilian disarmament.

The blueprint was laid out by National Council to Control Handguns (now Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence) Chairman Nelson T. “Pete” Shields in a 1976 interview with The New Yorker. Shields explained, “I’m convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily—given the political realities—going to be very modest.” Elaborating, Shields went on to say, “So then we’ll have to start working again to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen the next law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal—total control of handguns in the United States—is going to take time.”

In their more candid moments, gun controllers have confessed to this approach. In a 1996 piece for The Washington Post titled, “Disarm the Citizenry. But not yet,” columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, “Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic—purely symbolic—move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.”

In other words, the position on guns is clear. Anything they get today is the foundation they will build on tomorrow.

What anti-gun activists want is creeping incrementalism. They know all about frogs and boiling water, so they want to turn it up slowly. They make it a little tougher to buy a gun today, but then you get used to it and when they add something else, it’s not that big of a deal, either. Not for some, anyway.

Seriously, how many people gripe about filling out a Form 4473 when they buy a gun? Not many. We’re used to it. The same with background checks. Most of us are used to it. Which is why they now want universal background checks. It’s a small thing, but it’s another creep on our rights.

They’ve made their opinions clear. They will never be satisfied. But we already knew that. It’s why we don’t want to give up any more ground. They aren’t interested in compromise. They’re interested in taking it all. They want the whole pie and to leave us with nothing except, at most, a crumb or two.

No. That’s not how it works.

Cox is right. This is their endgame and we’re all on to them.