Why ban the guns that kill the least amount of people, and ignore the ones that kill the most?

[TeddyR]

9. Most people involved think it was a failure

Here's an excerpt from a piece in the Guardian on Monday discussing the AWB:

The loophole-ridden 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, produced no clear evidence of reducing gun violence. An in-depth evaluation of the law concluded that the impact of even a more comprehensive ban would be “small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement”.

That was not a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. In the early 1990s, even some gun control advocates criticized the push for an assault weapon ban as a “distraction” with little crime-fighting benefit. But the ban generated intense, visceral reactions from the public. A former Democratic staffer who helped craft the assault weapon ban said he had hoped passing it would give Democrats the political momentum they needed to pass the drier, more technical gun laws that might actually save more lives.

Instead, the push for a political victory backfired. President Bill Clinton later blamed the assault weapon ban for the 1994 midterm victories that allowed Republicans to take over both houses of Congress. Many prominent gun control groups have since moved away from an assault ban – “through hard, bitter experience”, said Matt Bennett, a gun policy expert who advised Sandy Hook Promise.

Democrats know the research behind the ban. While a ban on high-capacity magazines could help some, the assault weapons ban “does nothing”, a former senior Obama administration official said last year.

Despite this, the ban has remained a moral litmus test for Democratic politicians.

Obama endorsed the assault weapon ban after Sandy Hook. Behind the scenes, the ban got little political support from the White House in 2013. Instead, the administration focused its energy on expanding background checks. When it came to the assault weapon ban, “We did the bare minimum,” the official said. “We would have pushed a lot harder if we had believed in it.”

Link - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/20/gun-control-orlando-attack-newtown-mass-shooting