The history of gun control in this county has generally only worked one way. Those calling for gun control laws take and expect Second Amendment advocates to give things up.

Oh, they talk about compromise, and they’re very upset that pro-gun groups aren’t willing to do so.

Take this report from Mother Jones where we’re told gun control advocates are conceding oh-so-much.

Activists have conceded plenty to earn GOP support. The Senate stands in the way.

 

To hear Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tell it, the hopes for Congress to pass meaningful gun legislation have simply been diminished, but are not altogether dashed. “There’s plenty of proof points to show how this issue has changed,” insists the Democrats’ leading champion in the Senate for new gun measures. Democrats, once terrified to touch gun control, have wholly embraced stricter gun laws. A few Republican senators have accepted Murphy’s invitation to discuss a potential deal to expand background checks. The Connecticut senator even clings to the idea that former President Donald Trump would have reached a compromise on the issue in 2019 if his first impeachment trial had not frayed whatever meager threads tethered him to bipartisanship.

But for all that purported shift, Murphy and his colleagues in the Senate have nothing to show. Since the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that forged Murphy into the Senate’s leading gun control advocate, polls consistently find that a majority of Americans support background checks for every gun sale. Activists have conceded that they’d accept nearly any deal that Republicans would agree to. Yet Congress has not passed a single meaningful gun law over the past decade.

No, activists haven’t conceded a damn thing worth talking about.

See, what happens is gun control groups come up with a list of demands, then their idea of compromise is to just take a little less than they initially asked for. They start big and whittle down to what they probably really expected to get away with in the first place.

But what do gun rights supporters get out of the deal? We get less of our rights taken away than anti-gun jihadists originally wanted?  That might make sense when the gun control crowd has the votes to pass it anyway. Losing less than we would have might matter then, but what about when we can actually block legislation?

You know, like right now.

See, gun control backers talk about compromise, but they never really offer anything that remotely feels like a compromise. They don’t offer us anything we want. Take bump stocks, for example. Had they come up and said, “You want suppressors, we want bump stocks. Let’s deal,” then maybe I’d take their talk of compromise seriously.

Yet what did they do? While trying to take the bump stocks, they also were fighting tooth and nail about suppressors.

At no point are they willing to offer us anything of value, anything meaningful. Instead, all they do is take and take and, if they take a little less than they really want, we’re supposed to be grateful, probably by saying, “Thank you, may I have another.”

Frankly, no one needs to claim gun control activists have conceded plenty until they’re willing to at least talk about actually giving us something.

They won’t.

Which is fine, because I’m quite alright with blocking and opposing absolutely everything they want to do. Their policies are bad for people, good for criminals, and run afoul of the Constitution in every conceivable way.  And yet, we have people like the author who honestly seem to believe the gun control crowd is the reasonable one.

They’re not and they never have been, so knock it the hell off.