Important point about framing gun debate at town hall with my state reps and senator
Last week I went to a town hall with my state rep and another from a neighboring district and my senator; all progressives, all wonderful; they do regular town halls and are very responsive to constituents. They have been on the right side of the gun debate all along and have always worked for better gun laws, but getting only incremental change each legislative session due to the amount of resistance.
It was my state rep and one from a neighboring district and my state senator. What I noticed is that they were very careful to always say "gun violence prevention" rather than "gun control." It wasn't automatic yet; sometimes they would start to say gun control and then change to gun violence prevention. There were two NRA types who started shouting when the gun issue came up; insisting the reps and senator wanted to take away the second amendment and generally spouting NRA talking points. The others in the audience told them to be quiet let the reps/senator answer the questions. I realized that "gun control" is like a red flag in front of a bull, and gun violence prevention is a much better way to frame it.
This is Oregon, and we have liberal Portland and then a whole bunch of rural areas in the eastern part of the state, so a lot of gun lovers.
On another note, one of the reps referred to the "tax deform bill." It has made it very difficult for them to figure out a state budget becasue nobody really knows what the tax bill does yet. They spent a lot of time talking about all the things they are having to do at the state level in response to all the craziness in DC. It has taken a lot of time away from what they would have been doing with state business if that were not the case.