At CNN’s recent town hall on guns, President Barack Obama vehemently denied that his recent executive actions are part of a “conspiracy” to disarm the American public, and emphasized how modest his initiatives really are. “We put out a proposal that is commonsense, modest, does not claim to solve every problem, is respectful of the Second Amendment,” he said. “And the way it is described is that we’re trying to take away everybody’s guns.” He was then challenged on whether his actions were too modest to have any effect on gun violence.

Thus, the president was caught in a Catch-22 successfully deployed by pro-gun advocates. Any gun-control proposal is met with the charge that it’s the first step toward the confiscation of all guns. In response, the gun-control advocate insists the proposal is limited. Its limitations then allow its opponents to raise questions about its likely effectiveness. In this way, calls for greater gun control are weakened on both fronts, undermining an argument that—if polls are to be believed—should be palatable to a wide swath of the country.

The time has come for a new strategy, one that prioritizes public safety over the paranoia of some gun owners.

The consequences of this Catch-22 are apparent in the countless loopholes and inconsistencies in the nation’s gun laws, many resulting from the efforts of legislators to reassure gun owners that the law in question will not threaten their guns. The limitations of the federal background check system itself are evidence of the potency of the Catch-22 strategy. Background checks are required only for sales by licensed dealers, thus exempting the many thousands of transactions between persons who are not licensed dealers. And only people who fall within certain narrowly drawn categories of prohibited buyers can be denied guns. For example, although domestic violence misdemeanants may be denied guns, perpetrators of other violent misdemeanors are not barred, even though such offenses are predictors of more serious violent crimes.

The system also puts a premium on the need to complete the background check quickly, to minimize any inconvenience to gun buyers; it is, after all, called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The law requires that the check be completed within three business days, which has resulted in thousands of sales to prohibited buyers due to incomplete record reviews, including the shooter who murdered nine parishioners at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The premium on speed also means that only records that have been entered into a computerized database can be checked, allowing sales to people like the Virginia Tech shooter, whose record of being adjudicated as mentally ill and dangerous had not been entered into the system. Finally, the system allows no discretion for denying guns to buyers who may have repeatedly manifested violent tendencies, but have not yet committed an act that would fit one of the defined categories of “prohibited purchaser.”