It depends on what one sees as reasonable (also see the difference between reasonable and rational). Take the gun control that you referenced as an example. It's likely that there is a vast difference in knowledge of the technical as well as legal aspects of firearms between gun owners and non-gun owners. So the law could be rational, but the two groups could differ on the reasonablenes. I see the slippery slope argument less today than I did in years past.

In my opinion, most proposals by either side on a variety of topics are not good options. They have become hard-line battle cries for their respective party in order to motivate hardcore supporters to come out to vote, particularly in the primaries in which the radicals comprise a larger share than in general elections.

What you find "fascinating" is a culture that is over 200yr old. What you are complaining about has been a constant part of our culture since the 1770s and ingrained in Federal law in 1789.

> Reasonable laws are perpetually overshadowed by the boogeyman on the horizon.

Because that’s exactly what’s happened in the past. We don’t just get ONE piece of gun legislation and that’s the end of it, every so many years we keep on getting pushes for more. For immigration reform, we didn’t just get ONE amnesty of illegal immigrants and then strict immigration control which was promised back during the Reagan administration, we got complete acceptance of continued illegal immigration and renewed calls for amnesty.

The smart money is always on not trusting the government.

It's like when we deign policy we never have KPI's, OKR's, or any other metrics associated with it to define what we agree what success is. Everything is an ideological battle to claim a new trench and push the opposition back a trench.

I think we'd get along better if we first proposed and found agreement upon which metrics we want to achieve (gun deaths at x%, or a decline of x% by such and such date, etc) and then implement policy that get there. And then correct as needed.

There was a time when universities had a very disproportionate amount of males VS females. So we passed policy that was designed to make a university degree more achievable for females. And it has worked, which is great! However, we never really implemented an end condition to this policy. And the entrenched apparatus that makes it's living or achieves ideological goals continue the policy, as-is, in a never ending battle.

If we would have said "we want 50% of college students to be female by x-date" (or better, we want to maintain a balance of 50/50) then we could have either stopped the policies that were used to correct the initial condition or modify them to hold it steady at 50%. But we haven't and now 56% are females and it's growing and any suggestion that we either need to hold off on these policies now that we achieved the goal or even correct it to get more males into universities is immediately labeled sexist, etc.

I think it's easier to get a diverse group of people to work towards a common goal when you define the end condition (put a man on the moon) rather than using vague descriptions of what would be a better world. At the very least it stops skeptics from just flat out saying "no, as it will never end".