When I was the staff Scriptomaniac of the Mensa newsletter Nexus in the 1980s, the staff Curmudgeon Jon K. Evans labeled me a bleeding heart liberal. But I could not be accepted by liberals as a liberal because I did not believe in gun control. Since the 1960s, blind faith in Gun Control has been used as a Litmus Test For Liberalism, used by liberals to separate trule liberals from faux liberals. The Left needs to make guns not a left-right litmus test.
(Actual Left and Right are waning demographics.)