BigDipper - exactly. That's how the gov't likes to do things - piecemeal, bit at a time, innocent-looking legislature with the power to manipulate and push it further should they need to. The current gov't here in the UK wants to get rid of the NHS, and more over to private healthcare, but they wouldn't dare brazenly do something like that 'just like that' - come out and announce that they're shutting it down - there would be open revolt. That's the stuff of totalitarian dystopia movies. Instead, they passed legislation that will basically let them DO that any time they like, and then engage in crafty smear campaigns, covered extensively by the media (no doubt with insider influence), about how doctors and nurses are bumbling incompetent fools and how we need reform and changes, all the while cutting funding a little more here and there, removing services and ordering restructuring and slight policy changes that will kill it from the ground up. It's a slow grind, a war of attrition, and if the US gov't ever decided to ban firearms I guarantee that's how it would happen - not with a sudden BAN ON ALL GUNS but a slow creep - ban automatics, ban "scary looking guns", introduce policy changes that limits who can have guns, slowly at first (licensing, required training, not to be given to felons or people in XYZ category, things that a lot of people won't argue with), introduce max ammo caps on magazines, ban certain types of ammo, use mass shootings to argue why there should be reform and limits against who can carry guns... And make it all sound convincing with clever media smear campaigns, inject the ideas into popular culture... They aren't stupid, no-one would dare come right out on the news and say they are banning guns... They just need to make you believe that you shouldn't have them.
Aaaand now I sound like a crazed conspiracy nut