To everyone else on the thread:

The hard truth is that people will never escape the clutches of the two parties. The entire thread is about what side is "better," when the reality is that doesn't matter. It's only going to be fixed when we take the issue away from the political death grip that's strangling it.

Do Republican lawmakers have horrific views on how to fix the gun problem in America? They sure do.

Do Democratic lawmakers favor more gun control? Yes, relative to Republicans they do. Have their solutions ever been meaningful. Absolutely not.

Does any of that matter in terms of fixing the problem? Not one bit.

All the political parties are doing is adding an impossible layer to fixing the problem. Want proof? Read every comment in this thread. The number of people who are talking about fixing the problem are outnumbered significantly by everyone talking about party politics.

I'm not saying, nor have I ever said both parties are equal. In fact I never once said anything similar to that. Everyone made the assumption that "sides" means Democratic and Republican lawmakers, but I meant the people on both sides of the argument, not their party identity.

I'm not talking about the equivalency of political leaders, I'm talking about the inability of citizens to remove their individual political affiliations in order to have a conversation. In that sense both sides are responsible for refusing to do that. Believe it or not I grew up in a version of America where that wasn't a difficult thing to do.

Steamroller,

Thank you for posting this. Unfortunately it had a statistically predictable outcome, and I have better things to do than be insulted for attempting to open a dialogue on gun control, as do you.

We had a unicorn moment in the original post that was fantastic, and that was largely because of you. Thanks again for that. Comments are still coming in that give me hope that a lot of people like us want to have this discussion without the overbearing weight of politics killing progress. That's important.

I'm not sure if it can be replicated in the future, but I sure hope so. We're not going to change anything in the foreseeable future. This thread is the America we live in. The other one is the America we need.