I wrote out a whole reply to your various points (which I’ll send if you want) but one thing in your post caught my eye as the most vital and important…
I want training and licensing, universal registration and background checks, widespread mental healthcare, and poverty intervention. I want to see that immediately.
I’m fairly pro-gun (if you hadn’t figured that out already). I also DESPERATELY want widespread mental healthcare and poverty intervention. I want to see these things IMMEDIATELY and in great quantity. As in, let’s pass a bill today and start this vitally important work tomorrow. This to me is vital to the health of the nation that I love, because the nation is made up of its people and too many of those people are poor and suffering. I don’t think it is (or should be) the American way to just sit and laugh at our fellow countrymen and women and let them suffer while we live the high life.
We disagree on everything else, but I think we agree on this. So why don’t we set aside arguing over the things we disagree on, and focus on implementing the things we DO agree would benefit our nation?
And that was the meat of my original point. When it comes to guns, I suspect you and I are fairly opposite. But I suspect that when it comes to taking care of our fellow humans, you and I are not so different.
Yet the political machines on both sides have us at each others’ throats over gun rights vs gun control, while they push for their own power. What we (people on both sides of the aisle) SHOULD be doing is TALKING to each other, figuring out what we agree on, and focusing on getting THAT done.
But top of just about everyone’s list is end corruption in Washington, so there’s a vested interest in making sure we keep fighting each other rather than working together. And right now that interest is winning.
If you could push a button to make a deal, that was ‘you give up further pushes for gun control, but in exchange we get universal mental health care and poverty intervention’, would you push that button?
FWIW, in the opposite- ‘would you codify gun regulations as they currently are, but in exchange get universal mental health care and poverty intervention’ I’d push that button in a heartbeat.