GETTING REALISTIC ABOUT GUNS -- ON BOTH THE RIGHT AND LEFT

Let's get realistic. A majority of folks both Right and Left, even a majority of NRA members, support background checks for gun purchases. Some people on the Right however oppose gun and ammo registration because they don't want an increasingly tyrannical Uncle Sam to know how many guns there are or in whose hands -- and because they see that as a preclude to confiscation.

Those on the U.S. right stockpiling weapons of war are not doing it in order to put food on the table. Precisely because many people on the Right do know how to live off the land, it would not occur to them to blow the family dinner to bits. They fully expect attempted societal breakdown and/or martial law.  The number of families with guns has been steadily declining, but those with guns own enough for every man, woman and child here, not that they're passing them out. Half the guns in the US are concentrated in 3% of the population.

The more intrusive the U.S. federal government becomes, the more Progressives on the Left (not liberals; progressives) tend to agree that the right to bear arms ought to be individual not simply militia-collective. Right and Left however split on the issue of mandatory gun safety and traces. 

Contrary to myth, per capita, more people die from deliberate gun violence in rural southern states than in Illinois which contains Chicago or in New York which contains New York City. The deaths of little children playing with guns are also highest there. Also contrary to myth, it's purportedly violent urban dwellers pushing for gun controls -- and getting them in their areas. Urban guns come largely from rural gun shows in permissive states. (Chicago guns for example tend to come from gun shows in places with few restraints.) Urban dwellers want gun control (background checks at gun shows, gun registration, a cap on massive buys there, etc.) to stop or at least slow that flow.

Realistically, therefore, if we're going to get somewhere, the U.S. needs to talk about what constitutes mandatory gun safety,  and impede the movement of deadly weapons across state lines. There is a desperate need for us to talk rationally about each of those areas. 

Each side though sees the other as being fooled.

On the Left, most see the right wing as deliberately kept in a constant state of frenzy by global corporate gun manufacturers making a literal killing off rightwing fear and consequent gun stockpiling.

On the Right, some do not believe that the Las Vegas and Sandy Hook massacres happened or they believe that each was a government operation, either way staged to justify the confiscation of guns. 

We need to talk. We're killing more of each other than any Enemy, real or imagined, is.  I'm not pretending to omniscience; I'm attempting to seed meaningful discussion. Please help....Thank you!