The NRA represents 5 to 10 million lost causes, nothing like the insurmountable constitutional blocker you propose. I agree that there are many more people that have associated their personal identity with the 2nd amendment than that, I'm not sure they constitute a majority of the country.
The way I see it, step one is getting to a place where emotional appeals about grandma needing a force equalizer are dismissed more quickly than points about statistics showing that guns overall enhance violence. So experimental comments that turn some people off? Meh.
The NRA represents a lot more people than you think, even on this board. I've never been a member but reading your comments reminds me that I ought to purchase a membership and donate today.
My grandfather, father, mother, and myself have all used a handgun in self defense before. I would posit that I am existing to type this because of personal firearm ownership. Whenever I see comments like yours I empathize and remind myself that you are good natured but that you lack the background and context to realize why someone might reasonably want or need to arm themselves. Most of my friends here in California are like that, and they have no idea how nice and safe their environment and upbringing was in the pricy coastal cities and university towns of the West Coast. Some of us are from rougher places. Having lived in many different environments with different threat levels I understand the genesis of both viewpoints, but I know which one I'd consider right.
Our criminal neighbor tried to bash my father's head in with a tire iron on the front lawn - before you counter that we wouldn't need firearms to defend ourselves with if there weren't firearms out there in the first place.
For what it's worth I've mostly lived in moderately poor communities in the Midwest. Not grindingly poor, but not on the right side of various median measures.
Somehow I haven't been in any situations where a gun seemed like it would have helped (and there aren't such stories flying around my extended family either).
The way I see it, step one is getting to a place where emotional appeals about grandma needing a force equalizer are dismissed more quickly than points about statistics showing that guns overall enhance violence. So experimental comments that turn some people off? Meh.