If you mean, Steve, "you're never going to convince Bruce" that’s obviously the case. But you don't ever expect to change the minds of people your arguing with, that's not the point. But there are always ways of putting things you haven't tried before, and it's a chance to try them out.
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It occurs to me there's a sense in which the focus on gun ownership as such is a mistake. In one way the slogan "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is true. You do indeed get societies where a high degree of gun ownership isn't accompanied by a high degree of killings. Societies where the culture is such that people can be trusted. But the US isn't a society like that.

It's like the difference between allowing a safe person to get a gun, and allowing an unbalanced person to get a gun. Norway and Canada are the safe person who can be trusted, writ large - the US is the unbalanced person who can’t be.