Nearly all political terminology is heavily overloaded. The best you can do is take the words as they are used; trying to infer meaning from them etymologically won't work.

For example, if we were to take the term "conservative" literally we would expect Republicans to be rabid environmentalists.

Yes. The more classical term "liberal," unfortunately, has been steadily eroding into a term used by people who espouse much the opposite of any form of liberation or freer society. Both major political wings amount to funnels for increasing government power and reach. Thus, the nation has learned to largely solve its social issues through docile hope (e.g. deferring to the spending decisions of oligarchical interests and trickle-down economics) and through the torture of imprisonment to settle nonviolent disobedience.

There are people who think that giving a central group the authority to prohibit an entire general population's ability to use guns is justified. They feel it would personally give themselves an increased sense of liberation. I empathize with the wish to see a more peaceful world (a highly subjective idealism). However, from my vantage, putting faith into a heavily centralized form of constraint is not "liberal" in any way that actually respects that word at a human level.

"A question (maybe a nitpick) about the word "liberal"--wouldn't it be more "liberal" to be against gun control since less control means more liberty?"

Yes.

Conversely, the political party aligned with corporate and business interests (whichever that may be at the time) is NOT the political party that will champion broad access to means of force.

Whatever (temporary) accident of history it is that the party of corporate power is also the party of "gun rights" is an anomaly and will self-correct quickly.

It probably depends on whether you believe guns are more likely to create liberty or destroy it.

There are some very reasonable arguments that guns destroy more liberty than they create, and thus it is liberal to be against tools that make violence so easily accessible.