Still, behind the heated rhetoric, there are areas of agreement. While polls show Americans almost evenly divided on the question of whether they want more gun control or stricter laws, they overwhelmingly support expanded gun-buyer background checks and overwhelmingly oppose bans on handguns.

Those two strongly held positions suggest potential for crafting a grander bargain on guns …

Gun rights advocates point out that most retail firearm dealers are mom-and-pop businesses and that, on some occasions, they have been shut down by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for mere paperwork errors. That’s also true.

Why does the ATF shut down these small dealers? Because doing so is the only civil tool it has to encourage compliance with its rules.

Oh horse crap.  Anyone who personally knows FFLs can attest to the fact that slight errors when thousands of guns are moved is unavoidable even under the best QA program.  Friends of FFLs can also attest to the fact that the ATF acts like hoodlums, thugs and bullies to FFLs.  The ATF shuts down FFLs because they can.  It’s that simple.

And by the way, these authors perpetrate the lie one more time that the majority of America wants universal background checks.  It isn’t true.  And there is no grand bargain on guns.  There is no compromise.  There is no cooperation.  There is only war between us as long as the collectivists want to enforce their will upon us.  There will never be peace.  That’s a promise.

Charles C. W. Cooke:

As in the various columns of the same bent, Bloomberg’s purpose here was obvious: To suggest that, by failing to crack down on the private sales of firearms, the federal government has dishonored the memory of the victims at Newtown. Something that abhorrent happened, this argument goes, and we did nothing.

To wish to prevent another Sandy Hook is an admirable and human instinct. But to chase placebos? That is infinitely less commendable. Typically, when government inaction is the complaint, it is beneficial to eschew emotion in favor of a couple of hard questions. The first is “What is it that you want the state to do?”; the second, “How would the state’s doing this affect the problem?” In this case, the “what” was the Toomey-Manchin bill, which would have forced all the states to run background checks on all private transfers and sales of firearms. And the answer to “What would it have done?”: Nothing.

As a few of the more honest advocates of gun control acknowledged at the time, it is just about possible to argue with a straight face that universal background checks could help to prevent or diminish the general rate of gun crime. But it is certainly not possible to claim that they would prevent or even diminish the number of mass shootings.

I’m uncomfortable with this presentation.  I do not in the slightest acknowledge anything like universal background checks having any impact at all on crime.  Furthermore, eschewing emotion has nothing to do with my reaction.  It is vestiges of collectivism that forces one to ask the question, “What is it that you want the state to do?”  Rather, one must question whether doing something about some given state of affairs is within the province or purview of government to begin with?

In most cases in life, the answer is no.  This difference distinguishes the Northern “conservatives” (like those who write for NRO) from true conservatives.  That makes the answer to the question of “what” immaterial.