If in theory the NRA were to lose its vise grip over our national gun policy — due to a Democratic takeover of government, or its own legal and financial problems, or the rise of a competing entity more genuinely representative of gun-owning Americans — it wouldn’t end the debate. But it could open the possibility of common ground.

For gun control advocates, that promise would come with a responsibility to understand what’s possible and what isn’t. After so long on opposite sides of that divide, the solutions will have to be maddeningly incremental.

NRA extremists have railed for decades that anti-gun storm troopers are itching for a wholesale gun confiscation binge. Any gun control proposals that look anything like that will send otherwise reasonable gun owners running back to the bunker.

Law-abiding gun owners aren’t primarily the problem anyway. It’s that so many guns are in circulation in the U.S. — more firearms than people — that keeping them in law-abiding hands is like lassoing smoke.

Gun buyback programs could reduce that saturation without triggering cries of “gun grabber.” And, since most gun owners agree with universal background checks, that would be an obvious step if and when the NRA roadblock is gone.