Answer me this sincerely: Excluding words and a cessation of attacks, What does Kristoff offer? What would he allow people to do that they are not currently allowed to do?
I assume where you are going with this is that in compromise, both sides need to be willing to relinquish something. You're right, the more gun control side isn't offering anything other than backing off more draconian legislation that wouldn't pass Constitutional review anyway. So, essentially nothing.
What, then do you propose? Other than letting anyone and everyone buy whatever they want, which isn't going to happen.
You're talking about appeasement. Give the aggressor something so they leave you alone. Once you start paying the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane. Flip it around and talk about civil rights for a community one could argue is not entitled to them because they were not part of the group that founded and established the country. What rights are they going to put on the table, since we have no interest in just letting them have all the same rights as everyone else? They would be absolutely justified in telling us to shove it.
More to the point, this is simply a situation where we can't have guarantees. It is an essential civil liberty, and exactly the sort of thing we were warned requires eternal vigilance. We can't compromise with the gun grabbers, because they can't offer us protection for the rights they let us retain. If we allow one thing to be banned now, or accept one restriction today, if we let one thing stand without pursuing legislation to overturn it, what is to stop them from coming back and asking for one thing more tomorrow? The only guarantee of our rights to keep and bear arms is, our right to keep and bear arms. Anything we give them only makes it easier to take the rest. The only viable position is "hands off everything" because once you accede in principle to a violation of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", then you have thrown the whole thing out. Shall not be infringed means shall not be infringed. You agree to magazine limits, to banning certain types of ammunition or weapons with a certain action, or to the notion that we have to apply for permission to exercise the right (Tell me again, which other Constitutional rights require an application to exercise? ), you have rendered the Second Amendment meaningless.
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
