Didn't say the ban was all Bill's doing. Not sure what Reagan's (yes, Saint Ron) policy was but I do know he was well liked by the NRA.
My point was that when you compromise with the left it usually amounts to a one way trip to less  freedom for law abiding citizens. That's why they must not be allowed to stack the courts.
As for incrementalism; notions that would have been scoffed at a very short time ago, (sickos in girls facilities, team mascots under attack, unchecked immigration, the PC insanity that comes out of college campuses, the idea that you can be forced to buy insurance no matter the cost); those notions then become the "new normal", "the law of the land" as Obama likes to say. 
Often these changes come by bureaucratic fiat or by activist judges rather than the legislative process.  They call it precedence. Then these travesties are pointed to as comparable justification for the next loss of freedom that gets pushed onto an unwilling or uninformed public.