Most conservatives do not appreciate the childlike faith liberals have in government's ability to simply dictate behavior, nor their panic when told "it won't work." "But it's all we can do," runs the reply. It isn't, of course, nor is it obvious that doing anything at all will not make the problem worse.
I absolutely understand the desire to "do something", but it does not follow that throwing gasoline on a fire in an attempt to put it out will improve the situation, good intentions despite, and the sulky rejoinder, "well, at least I did something" sounds as childish as it really is.
But an open call for an outright gun ban would be an improvement in one area - it would at least be honest. Most of the chronic mendacity associated with gun control movement is simply its members' fear of stating publicly what their intention really is. And so they lie: "we're only after ammunition that's environmentally safe, not a gun ban," or "we only want to take those dangerous 30-round high-capacity ammo clips out of circulation - oh, did I say 30? I meant 20. Oh, did I say 20? I meant 10. Oh, did I say 10? I meant 7." And so it goes. It has been that way so long that it is no longer an effort to tell that they're lying through their teeth, every time.
That absolutely poisons reasonable debate on the topic. When a concerned conservative states that he or she thinks that some sort of flag should be set on the mentally incompetent, the response is always, 100% of the time, "oh, good, now how do we leverage this to include everybody?" And so we don't, and if you can't talk about a problem, solving it gets much more difficult.
I forget the state. The issue was shall issue, concealed carry permits. One gun grabber said a DUI should disqualify!