The issue means life & death, not of the statistical kind, but sudden and violent – just what Hobbes described as the most primal human and political motivation.   An overwhelming majority of the country wants common-sense reforms.    The actual policy results, however, have taken us in the opposite direction.  We’re a more pervasively armed society, w/ fewer restrictions on the ability of dangerously unfit people to acquire weapons of immense destructive power.

That’s all frustrating enough, but worse, advocates of reasonable gun control have been traduced, charged w/ intending to make modest reforms the first domino in a chain leading to a totalitarian state devoid of individual liberties.

That’s all infuriating of course, but over time has a more corrosive effect.   It’s bred cynicism, alienation, and a sullen apathy leading not just to a withdrawal from political activity, but to a loss of faith and allegiance to the institutions of democracy.   That’s the domino abt which we should be concerned.