Agreed.
I wouldn't mind him in the senate, or shit as governor of Texas, but I really don't see it happening, and do hope he has some serious competition for the Democratic nomination.
And I would point to his popularity is that Beto was running against Ted Cruz (one of the absolute worst) in a race that the Democrats needed to pick up 2 senate seats to wrestle control away from McConnell/Trump. And I can see that all that good press he got did bring him into play in that state, but as soon as he hit the Democratic POTUS nominee, he fizzled. Especially once he said that about guns, so I would point to this too as a actual example of why the attack on 'Democrats' being anti-guns falls apart, and is not what the right wing media brainwashes people into believing.
As for 'gun control' playing well, not having Rittenhouses' running around playing army in the city, gun related crimes, and school shootings are something people do care about. But that doesn't mean that anyone is going to come 'take your guns' like it gets sold as when people talk about it by editing out any nuance to the conversation with slickly edited clickbait and nonstop talking head trolling on their TV/Hate Radio/internet spam.
I would point out that it is exactly the messaging that the Democrats put out there. And also what they have done/try to do in practice. You even pointed out that Obama actually expanded gun rights.
Just because the Republicans have become divorced from reality, doesn't mean that it is not reality.
As for owning the conversation and steering it, how? For real, how do you overcome a right wing propaganda circus that the mega wealthy Republicans like the Koch's and Rupert Murdoch, Sinclair broadcasting buying up all the local tv, local papers being put out of business, and the online propaganda networking they have developed while setting up their legal trolls over the last 3-4 decades?
I agree as long as we are just using the broadest sense of the trigger phrase 'gun control'. I would even go a step further and say that the broad public discussion that occurs really isn't even real most of the time, it is just trolls spamming shit and people not realizing they are being cat fished and just end up replaying those 'arguments' when the topic comes up in the real world.
For now, the Democrats need to keep winning like they have been since the Republicans and Trump have been exposed to working with foreign militaries to attack our democracy in 2017.
It is a long road to getting our democracy back on track, especially as the asymmetric warfare continues, but it is the only way through it. I really don't want the Democrats to start having to rely on lies, cheating, and breaking our laws to fix what the Republicans have broken.
No what is the oppositions (Republicans) fault is their reliance on lies to maintain the power to stop all legislation not directly benefitting the Wealthy White Heterosexual Male Only agenda.