Gun, Politics and citizens of United State.

drove up the shore of Lake Huron to a gun shop, handled a few guns, laid down my cash, and walked out minutes later with a cardboard box under my arm. That was it. The gun in the box- a Russian-made SKS semi-automatic rifle — cost me about $130.

Someone, somewhere is now muttering that
I am a liar, that there's no way I got a Russian SKS for that price, which is about a third of the going rate. But I left one thing out: the actual price was $169 Canadian. In Canada, where I live, an SKS is cheap as dirt.

And this is why I was surprised to come across a 2012 Adam Gopnik piece in The New Yorker, claiming that Canada has no gun problem because getting a gun here is "very, very difficult." That's news to me.

Perhaps I quibble. Gopnik's broader point was that the harder it is to get a gun, the safer we all are, which is true enough. But in suggesting the answer to mass public shootings is to make it very difficult or even impossible to get a gun, he hits a wall: Tell people you want to make it very hard to get a gun, and you will win little support among those who wish to get one.

And you will need their support if you intend to regulate guns, because they vote. And not only do they vote, but, unlike many gun-control supporters, they often vote based on candidates' gun-rights positions.

While the money that flows from the gun industry through the NRA to political campaigns cannot be ignored, the group's true political power stems from the votes it can bring out, that can put politicians in officer or boot them from it. Although the NRA's 5 million members are just a small slice of the 55 million gun owners in America, its messages resonate and it can whistle up an army of single-issue voters to punish politicians it assigns failing grades.

But most gun owners do not entirely agree with the NRA. Surveys repeatedly tell us that about 90% of Americans favor universal background checks, which the Brady Campaign justifiably insists is the single most important policy means of reducing firearms deaths.

And most gun owners feel much the same way. According to a 2012 poll, 87% of gun owners support universal background checks, including 74% of current and former NRA members.

Many moderate gun owners are among the nation's 22 million hunters. Out of step with a new wave of "modern sporting rifles" — the gun industry's latest label for what were once called assault rifles — they are derided as "Fudds" (after Elmer Fudd) by the NRA's true believers.

But many others own handguns. The moderate gun owner often confounds both the redneck stereotype and the militant's stereotype of the Fudd.

In rural Missouri, I met one concealed carry permit holder who said he owned 20 or 30 guns-he laughed, admitting he had lost count. But he felt universal background checks were a good idea. In Alaska, I met another man, who insisted carrying a handgun was a practical necessity during the salmon run, who felt the same way about background checks.

To keep those moderates on its side, the NRA tries to polarize the debate, warning gun owners they are hated, beleaguered minority persecuted by well-funded anti-gun bigots who loathe them. If that seems overstated, here's conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch, ranting on Twitter: "These people hate innocent, law-abiding gun owners more than the actual murderers."

Charlton Heston, as president of the NRA in the 1990s, set the tone by casting gun owners as victims of a culture war, suggesting they were being bullied into silence by a growing stigma attached to owning a gun.

Too many gun-control advocates have taken the bait. Evan DeFilippis and Devin Hughes publish a stream of carefully researched articles at armedwithreason.com and elsewhere; they also run a Twitter account which sarcastically describes murderers simply as "responsible gun owners." Others deride gun owners as "ammosexuals," gun fetishists, and worse.

All this shouting over whether gun owners — 31% of all U.S. households — are bad, morally reprehensible people, all the online mud-slinging, distracts from a more serious discussion about just what might be done to reduce the number of Americans killed with guns each year needed to convince moderate gun owners that any given gun control bill would be worth supporting.

It drives those moderates away, into the waiting arms of Wayne LaPierre, who coos that he will always love them regardless. Culture war favors the NRA.

But despite that proven dynamic, the gun-control movement continues to play into the culture war they can't win. The Committee to Stop Gun Violence, for example, puts a distressing amount of energy into ongoing Twitter fights with people best ignored. The Sacramento Bee published a column promising "a deeper way to think about guns," suggesting that gun owners are essentially like drug addicts, fundamentally defective and inadequate people who need their guns to feel whole.

This rhetoric is the product of frustration, of course. Twenty children are shot, progress seems inevitable, new legislation is within reach — and then, in steps the NRA and its allies, calling for armed guards in schools, with a legion of online robots squawking its message, reading their assigned lines in unison.

Who can resist anger? Who can resist blaming gun owners, in general, for resisting change?

But such generalizations about gun owners extend into serious proposals, and get in the way of progress. Perhaps, for example, gun owners should be required to hold liability insurance for their guns, just as drivers do for their cars. This isn't unreasonable, in itself. Shooting victims often suffer long-term disability as a result of their injuries, and the person who is responsible for those injuries ought to be liable.

Fair enough. But mandatory insurance is rarely promoted in those terms. Instead, we hear that the only way to get gun owners to be responsible is to hit them in the wallet, or that gun owners should face absolute liability for stolen guns. We proceed from the assumption that the gun owner is an irresponsible lout.

In the face of all this disapproval, your average gun owner can be forgiven for suspecting that the real motive of mandatory insurance is to use high premiums as a lever to pry his guns from his warm, still-living hands.

In the wake of mass murder at Umpqua Community College, Hillary Clinton has proposed a platform of careful, moderate reforms. The requirement for background checks will be extended to cover all sales. Gun dealers' records will be inspected, and shady dealers will find their licenses revoked. Victims and their families will again be able to sue gun makers. And the rules will be tightened to help keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and the mentally ill.

These are small steps, but important steps. These are mostly proposals to do exactly what the gun lobby always insists should be done. Nothing here will affect the lawful gun owner. Nothing here is radical.

And small steps work. As the criminologist Franklin Zimring argues, small obstacles in the way of crime have outsized deterrent effects, simply because people seek the path of least resistance.

But no sooner had Clinton announced her plan than it was hailed as sweeping and revolutionary. Slate called it "aggressive"; NBC warned of "major new gun restrictions." This in the aftermath of a mass shooting, as a thousand online voices lashed out at ammosexuals and gun fetishists. Small steps became giant leaps.

For the many law-abiding gun owners who are listening, the subtext rules: This is a sweeping plan proposed by a gun-grabbing candidate, who if she fails to win in Congress, will impose her will by executive order. She will let the anti-gunners launch frivolous lawsuits against gun makers, who will have to raise prices to cover their legal costs. She will expand the background check system to prohibit as many people as she can from buying guns.

This is the unhelpful rhetoric of gun control. Small steps become giant leaps. In Canada, I learn, it is "very, very difficult" to get a gun. Indeed, when I talk to American gun owners, they are often surprised that Canadians can own guns at all.

But the reality is much different: I must take a weekend course, fill out an application for a license, and submit to a waiting period. I am background-checked, and then receive my license. For the rest of my life, barring a criminal conviction, buying a gun is as simple as walking in, showing my license, and paying the man behind the counter.

This is easy. When that system was introduced, in 1995, gun owners resisted. But today, when I talk to fellow Canadian gun owners, the overwhelming majority say things like, "I figure licensing is a good thing. You've got to have some control." And Canada's firearms death rate is one fifth of that in the United States. Small obstacles work.

The gun lobby has succeeded in framing gun control as a punishment imposed on gun owners for transgressing social norms, rather than as a public safety measure.

Breaking down that narrative ought to be a priority. Reinforcing it is counterproductive. Moderate gun owners are out there, but they will not be won over by promises to make buying a gun very, very difficult. They should be courted instead with examples of just how easy progress can be.