...and then banning them?
Assault-weapon bans are not the go-to, default, knee-jerk reaction to any shooting that makes the news?
Bear in mind that the rifle used in Newtown, which was supposed to be the "wake-up call", was not an "assault weapon" at the time it was bought or the time is was used in the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary. There has been an AWB in Connecticut since September 14th, 1994; it was originally the Federal ban, which Connecticut put into state law before the Federal ban expired a decade later.
And yet... immediate response? "We need to ban assault weapons!"
I guess making even more guns "assault weapons" (by legal definition) wasn't done by the Democrats, but by the six-armed aliens that live on Ganymede.
Democrats continue to lack credibility when they talk of regulating guns. Too many people are effectively clueless about guns and what laws like "assault weapon bans" really do. Too few people get worked up for making something they don't own and don't care to own tightly regulated; in contrast, lots of people get worked up when others make something they own more regulated. This is particularly true with the "feel good but effectively useless" legislation that is popular with, say, the VPC. And too many anti-gun people are just supporting any gun law that is proposed simply because it strikes a blow at the hated "gun culture".
Not that the Republicans are a joy to behold; their constant rhetoric about domestic insurgency and rebellion and "Second Amendment remedies" and "taking our country back" are, frankly, disturbing.
But the central issue is that owning a gun has become a political statement because Democrats are trying to wage a culture war against gun ownership. So gun owners become dragged into politics based on this issue, while non-gun-owners tend to not give a shit, or to at least give it a much lower priority, than gun owners.
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