Given that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the insufferable gun control ghouls have been on a rampage to ravage the 2nd Amendment rights of people who have committed precisely zero gun crimes, as a reaction to the massacre in Las Vegas on Sunday, it might seem like a bit of a surprise that the National Rifle Association (NRA) signaled it won’t choose “bump stocks” as a legislative hill to die on.

But the NRA isn’t quite the absolutist gun-rights organization Schumer et al slur them as. What they are is reasonably smart political operators – and one wishes the Republicans in Congress shared their talent.

This is precisely right. They’re willing to give ground on bump stocks, since those are devices by which a semi-automatic weapon might be made to function like an automatic weapon and the NRA’s position has never been to defend machine guns as something the 2nd Amendment covers. Since the gun-grabbers in Congress have now seized on bump stocks as their cause du jour in the incremental effort to erode gun rights, the NRA has decided it’s something that can be sacrificed.

But what the NRA understands is you want a give-and-take in the legislative process. Nobody in Congress seems to understand that, though. The Republicans certainly don’t; they think it’s a win when they give away less than the other side asks.

And all the Democrats understand is the take part. For them to give anything up is unthinkable.

But this is the model the GOP has to begin adopting. OK Democrats, you can have your bump stock ban. Write up the bill and we’ll pass it.

Except we’re putting an amendment on that bill on its way to the floor, because you aren’t getting your bump stock ban without our concealed-carry reciprocity. Otherwise, no deal.

Unless you have something else to offer, and we’re willing to listen. Make it good, though, and don’t act like threats of negative press by CNN and NBC News, or Jimmy Kimmel running his poison mouth after all the people with jobs have gone to bed, is going to scare us into surrender. That’s over.

If Republican House and Senate members would begin taking such an approach, you’d get much more done in Congress.

Most of the things the Democrats want are dead letters and shouldn’t get consideration for anything but the round file. Bump stocks are an exception – nobody on the pro-gun side should give a damn about that. Trading that away for, effectively, a national concealed carry policy would be a nice win.

Let the Democrats say no to that deal. Why not? If they do it’ll expose their fixation on bump stocks as little more than a step in their efforts to run the table on gun control, and it will also show their bad faith in being unwilling to negotiate.

We already know they don’t care about bump stocks. We know this, because as the NRA noted the Obama administration signed off on them twice already. Here was one of those…

If they really thought these devices were inherently evil they would have objected to them long ago. They didn’t. But now they’re the Worst Thing Ever, so if this new revelation on the part of the Democrats is sincere they’d be willing to allow law-abiding gun owners to have some considerations in blue states as a small price to pay for such an urgent improvement, right?

It’s worth at least putting it to the test. Let’s see if the Republicans on Capitol Hill are sharp enough to follow the NRA’s lead.