Ive never heard a rural person talk about wanting to bring guns into cities, they generally avoid cities in general. I do hear lots of talk about urban focused gun regulations wanting to be passed nation wide without any exemptions for rural folks or even the slightest nuance or knowledge about guns and existing gun laws.

America's biggest obstacle to meaningful gun control is the groups and people pushing gun control the hardest have no idea what they are legislating. That's how we got nonsense bans on stuff like slings and bayonets, or trying to specifically ban AR-15s while functionally identical guns would remain legal.

And the second obstacle, which isn't far behind, is nobody trusts the US government enough to want to disarm themselves. We already got a police state and the largest military in the world and absolutely zero reasons in living memory to trust the government to look after its people instead of abusing them.

And frankly, I think any gun control measure in America is completely worthless and will only do more harm than good if the majority of gun owners don't trust the government enough to protect them all the time and aren't willingly turning in their guns. US citizens have enough guns to arm the entirety of themselves 100x times over so even if you could seize 95% of guns with magic, that's still enough blackmarket guns for 100+ years of insurgency with zero additional production. Personally I think we would do better to focus more on improving the lives of average citizens so they don't want to blast people randomly.

Cant you all just pass some laws that apply to your place only? Why does it have to be a trade.

That's not what was done. The GCA and NFA was imposed on the entire country and none of the gun control advocates are offering to give that up in exchange for more local control. That was the "compromise." (oh yes, we did get an act allowing exemption from prosecution for merely travelling though a restrictive jurisdiction with an illegal weapon, but surprise surprise, places like New York just ignore that anyway and jail you until you can appeal it to federal court) It was always more and more regulation on people in the 'country' with nothing in exchange to offer them for having to give something up. And then, on top of that, the 'cities' added more on top of that (but refer to next paragraph for more).

When the 'country' finally got sick of it then you wound up with state pre-emption against local control being passed in most states because it turned out that bargain was a fraud.

So what I would propose, is if 'city' really wants to loosen up the gridlock, they should bring something serious to the negotiating table. Like ending the GCA and NFA in 'country' and in exchange state pre-emption gets nixed so 'city' can pass tighter laws there.

So to answer your question:

> Cant you all just pass some laws that apply to your place only? Why does it have to be a trade.

Here is where we are at. State pre-emption stops 'city' from passing stronger local control. And federal law stops 'country' from passing weaker local control. To break that gridlock 'city' and 'country' have to have something on the offering table for each other. That is why it has to be a trade.

But then, "country" feels slighted when "city" eventually grows to encompass some of them.