More than 125 people turned up at the Rock Ridge Country Club Saturday morning for a breakfast fundraiser in support of the Third Annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence, which will take place on December 9 in Washington, DC. The event, hosted by The Newtown Foundation, drew a crowd of engaged and committed advocates for curbing gun violence.

The lineup of speakers promised a morning of sustained applause: Po Murray, chairman of the Newtown Action Alliance, which lobbies legislators and brings victims of gun violence together at the National Vigil each year; Newtown’s representatives in Congress, Representative Elizabeth Esty and Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, who have become steadfast advocates of eliminating background check loopholes and other sensible regulations affecting gun owners; Tom Sullivan, father of 27-year-old Alex Sullivan who died in the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo.; First Selectman Pat Llodra; and keynote speaker Dr Daniel Webster, director of the Hopkins Center for Gun Policy Research.

While a morning spent listening to arguments you agree with can be reassuring, inspirational, and enriching in every sense, there was acknowledgement that the real work in the campaign against gun violence is going to involve reaching out to those who do not believe that the current lax regulation of guns in America is a problem. In a political culture where hands that reach out beyond the bounds of established orthodoxies get their wrists slapped, finding real dialogue on this critical issue is going to be difficult.

Consider the fate of Dick Metcalf, who for 37 years wrote about firearms, vigorously advocating for gun owner rights. He described himself as a Second Amendment fundamentalist. Two years ago he was abruptly fired by Guns & Ammo magazine for a column he wrote exploring what he called “the distinction between regulations and infringement as it applies to constitutional rights.” For that heresy, he was transformed overnight from venerated advocate to pariah in the gun rights community. As Dr Webster pointed out to his Newtown audience Saturday morning, “NRA wants this to be us against them.”

Now consider the example of Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidate and self-proclaimed socialist, who took the stage for a speech on Monday in Virginia at the ultraconservative Liberty University founded by Jerry Falwell. The big applause lines in his speech for his liberal audiences — about a woman’s right to control her own body and gay rights and gay marriage — were greeted with stony silence by an otherwise polite student body that disagreed with him on nearly every point. He told his disapproving audience that he had come to speak to them because “it is vitally important for those of us who hold different views to be able to engage in a civil discourse. Too often in our country — and I think both sides bear responsibility for this — there is too much shouting at each other. There is too much making fun of each other.”

So we take great encouragement and hope from Dr Webster’s words to those committed to the fight against gun violence who gathered here in Newtown last weekend. “Let the conversation be about what can we do to save lives. We need to bring gun owners into this battle,” he advised, adding “We are building bridges to save lives.” That tricky construction of consensus will depend on people willing to work beyond the edge of established orthodoxies, not at the extreme margins of the debate, but near the middle where those who disagree with each other can at least hear each other speak.