As has often been remarked, Trump has always been much more of a raging moderate than a conservative. You see it on the terror watch-list issue. He wants to go where public opinion is and move the NRA on the issue, which makes sense given he doesn’t have any deepfelt ideological commitment to gun rights or due process. In theory, this kind of flexibility should make him a more difficult target for Democrats than someone who has very fixed views on such matters. The problem for Trump is that his “raging” — i.e., his off-the-cuff outrageousness — always overwhelms his “moderation.” On the gun issue, his musings about how it would have turned out much better if clubgoers had been armed — a topic for water-cooler discussion, but not for out-loud consideration by a presidential candidate — earned a rebuke from NRA officials and drove a narrative that Trump is too out-there even for the NRA. So his flexibility on the issue was lost in the haze of yet another pointless controversy.