Holding elected office is like sitting in the exit row of the airplane.
Every year, the President of the United States ceremoniously "pardons" a turkey, which then lives out the rest of its (usually short) life on a farm rather than being slaughtered for that year's Thanksgiving dinner. President Obama has noted the ridiculousness of the custom, and it's been noted on multiple occasions that one can hardly "pardon" a bird that has not committed any crime that needs pardoning.
Think of politics as a card game--not one played with a standard 52-card deck, but one of those collectible card games where you decide what goes in the deck.
The problem is that guns are sacred.
One of the points made by United Methodist congregations when they consider the possibility of becoming Reconciling Congregations is that the opportunity to change the Book of Discipline only comes around every four years, due to how the church is run at the international level.
My first presidential election was a disappointment. It was 2004, the year George W. Bush was reelected.