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There is generally a sense among gun owners that there have always been more concessions to be made. Any "compromise" with gun owners needs to be an actual compromise, not just a "you lose one more inch" style compromise.
I'm not huge into the gun scene, but some of the compromises I've heard could be:
Easier gun modification, specifically silencers. Its a pain in the ass to get a silencer on a gun right now. And unlike how Hollywood depicts them, silencers do not "silence" a gun. They turn it from instant hearing loss without ear protection to hearing loss under prolonged use. They also require subsonic rounds (otherwise the crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier defeats the purpose).
Some form of national gun transportation standardization. There are scenarios where you can legally own a gun, have it locked up in your trunk, drive across the wrong state line and suddenly you are violating a law.
Some form of concealed carry reciprocity. States all have their own versions of concealed carry (or don't allow it).
There are 51 versions of gun laws out there. Standardizing them in a way that doesn't treat California or New York laws as basis for standardization would potentially be appreciated. One way I could see them doing this is create different levels of constitutionally approved gun restrictions. Maybe 5 levels. With level one being the strictest, maybe equivalent to cities in California, New York City, or DC. And level 5 being the least strict, something you might see in rural Alaska. Municipalities are allowed to choose one of these levels of strictness, but they can't keep making up all their own restrictions and bullshit.
One thing I'd personally be interested in seeing it to remove all special exception carve-outs for law enforcement or active military. Instead there is only one category of carve-out: "Militia". The police and military can be assigned to this carve-out. But there is also a path for regular citizens to join the militia (devil would be in the details here).
This is just sort of politics though, and it happens on every other issue. Gun owners like to use phrases like 'one more inch' quite a lot but the reality is that these things do go back and forth. Sometimes they lose inches, sometimes they gain them back (see Heller, Assault Weapons Ban, NYSRPA v. Bruen etc. etc.).
I mean this sort of thing really does seem like an unequal compromise because it amounts to putting a hard cap on gun control but still allowing very lax states. Why would Democrats agree to that, especially when all polling indicates that gun control is a winning issue for them?
At the national level they could argue to change the specific restrictions in the strictest gun control category. At the state and local level they get to fight over upgrading the strictness level of gun control.
Also the whole attitude of 'we can win, so why compromise ' is part of why gun owners are so "uncompromising".
Well that's just politics on both sides though. If I have policy preference X, and think I can get it done, why would I compromise for less than X? I wouldn't begrudge the same behaviour from pro-gun activists..
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Because Democrats might want to win outside of their usual blue areas?
Beto O'Rourke tried the "Hell yes we're going to take your AR-15" shtick in Texas.
He later achieved the honor of losing to Abbot by Nine Points.
Not that this was the only reason, of course.
He lost by nine points in an R+5 PVI state in a Democratic presidential mid-term. Shocking.
Republicans won the House elections by 20 points overall.
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It's not and historically has been a great way for Democrats to lose elections. Almost all the polling you're talking about is vague preference polling that has things like "should laws be stricter?" along with things like "<current law already on the books> is too far". Same sort of thing with economic policy questions. At least the Gallup poll includes data from the 90s or 50s depending on the question.
No. AWB, ERPOs, safe storage laws, licensing and raising minimum ages all consistently get comfortable majorities.
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Four: Re-open the registry for machine guns.
That is, new machine guns (i.e. full autos) can be manufactured and can be owned and used by non-FFLs, but they might still have to be registered/a tax stamp applied.
As part of that, it shouldn't be illegal to own components that can convert a semi-auto into a full auto.
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