Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has been beating the war drums of gun control for quite some time. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I saw his name in the news when it wasn’t something to do with restricting our right to keep and bear arms.

Frankly, I’m not even sure he has positions outside of gun control, save those that the party leadership gives him.

However, we definitely know how he feels about the Second Amendment.

Now, though, it seems the senator is willing to settle.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Sunday said he is willing to “settle” for less aggressive gun control reform “because that will save lives,” days after four students were killed in a shooting at Michigan high school.

“I won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, right. I want universal background checks, I want a ban on assault weapons, but I will settle for something much less because that will save lives,” Murphy told co-host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

…

Murphy, who has pushed for gun control legislation throughout his career, said on Sunday that he hopes that Congress can take up gun control measures in the coming weeks, noting that Republicans often have “epiphanies” on the issue in the wake of mass school shootings.

“I wish my Republican colleagues didn’t, sort of, have epiphanies on this issue only after mass school shootings. But that tends to be what happens, and so my hope is that in the next couple of weeks we can get back to the table and see if we can, at the very least, as you said, maybe close the gun show loophole. That alone would save a lot of lives,” he said.

Murphy went on to claim they may have as many as 54 votes in the Senate for universal background checks. I think he’s dreaming.

However, I find it hilarious that he’s willing to settle now that we know support for gun control is plummeting. It’s not just one poll showing it, either. Now that he’s seeing support for his goals cratering, he’s willing to settle for something, anything, so that he can claim some level of victory.

What he’s trying to do is appear to be reasonable. “I’m willing to settle for less,” he says. He’ll likely talk about compromise and finding some common ground or something.

None of that is real.

See, what Sen. Chris Murphy really wants is all the background checks and bans on any number of modern firearms – you don’t think that “assault weapon ban” is going to just settle for AR-15s, do you? – and everything else. He’s just willing to take a bite at a time.

Notice that people like Murphy never offer anything our side might want. They never try to give a little in order to get a little. All they ever offer is to just take a little bit less than they want, and we’re supposed to be appreciative of that. That’s all he’s doing here, really. He says he’s willing to take a little less, but what isn’t at the end of his sentences is the phrase “for now.”

Today, he’ll settle.

Tomorrow, he’ll be back to demand the rest of it when it turns out that none of those proposals have saved any lives.