Exactly. For example, if you believe very strongly in Second Amendment rights, most Democratic candidates are not an option on election day. Additionally, Hillary Clinton was a very polarizing candidate even among registered Democrats.

As a prolific (and I mean prolific) gun owner, I've yet to see evidence of mass-Democrat candidate opposition to the 2nd amendment in general. "Gun Grabbing" hasn't been a party-wide concept despite Republican propaganda otherwise.

Stupid gun rules, like magazine size limitations, sure, but they almost never "come for my guns." Often the suggestions are perfectly reasonable in my mind - national gun registry, for example.

What purpose would a national gun registry serve other than to set the stage for eventual confiscation? I'm genuinely curious, because I can't think of any crime it would prevent, while being a big affront to privacy.

Considering that guns keep being sold to people they absolutely should not be, a registry makes it easy for the FBI or ATF to get flagged when an "unallowed purchaser" attempts or succeeds to make a purchase. Then they can know to either confiscate (because of an illegal purchase) or start monitoring heavily. Previous mass shootings were by people who should not have been able to purchase, but lack of a registry allowed them to "slip through the cracks."

Another scenario - the FBI is monitoring radicalization in a small community. They check the gun registry to see which of the people in the community becoming radicalized are actual potential threats and zero in their investigation on those individuals, to prevent a shooting.

Etc. Basically just makes law enforcement's jobs more feasible.

The government doesn't have the resources to "confiscate" every registered gun owners' guns at the same time, and so we would be well aware if a confiscation by a tyrannical government is coming, and all of us weirdo militia folk and preppers would already be putting the sandbags out. Trust me, some of these guys are practically wishing for it.

The intent behind a gun registry is to empower courts, and potentially police. A judge would be able to identify that someone owns several more guns when considering whether to grant bail for an armed robbery, and the surrender of those weapons until trial might be a condition of bail. It might be useful information for a judge who is crafting an order of protection in a case of stalking or domestic violence.

Similarly, police who are serving an arrest warrant might be able to serve the warrant with the knowledge that person of interest has several firearms on the property. Sometimes police know this today, but not because of government records.

(I'm not arguing a personal position one way or the other, just explaining the rationale.)