I like his points

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336528/questions-gun-controllers-rich-lowry

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, a call has gone up for a conversation about our gun laws. To that end, here are questions for advocates of gun control who are pushing for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, among other new restrictions, to address school shootings.

What’s the functional difference between an assault weapon and a semiautomatic rifle? You do understand that the answer is “nothing”? An assault weapon is not an automatic weapon. It is semiautomatic like most guns now sold in the United States, i.e., it fires every time the trigger is pulled. What sets it apart is its scary-looking features.

What’s more powerful, the Bushmaster .223 used by Adam Lanza in his slaughter or the average deer-hunting rifle? If the answer is the average deer-hunting rifle — indeed, many states ban the Bushmaster .223 for deer hunting because it is too weak — will you attempt to ban them, too?

What gun law would have stopped Newtown? Please be specific. Adam Lanza’s mother didn’t have a criminal record. Neither did he. If the Bushmaster .223 had been banned, he could have done the same with a semiautomatic rifle. If all semiautomatic rifles were banned — something that would never pass Congress — he could have done the same with a semiautomatic handgun. If high-capacity magazines had been banned, he could have reloaded with smaller magazines.

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How many guns are in the United States? The answer is 280 million. In a country with that many guns, how is gun control possibly going to succeed? If you ban a small subset of new guns for sale, what are you going to do about the rest? Let’s say you succeed beyond anything that is remotely possible. Let’s say you somehow stop the new sale of guns altogether and somehow decommission half of existing guns. What are you going to do with the other 140 million guns?
Does the Virginia Tech massacre affect your view of the efficacy of an assault-weapons ban? In 2007, Seung-Hui Cho perpetrated the deadliest shooting in the country’s history. He killed 32 people using two semiautomatic handguns.

Why has violent crime declined in the United States during the past 20 years even as gun ownership has ticked up? According to Gallup, nearly half of adults have a gun on their property, the highest number since 1993. Why has crime declined even as gun-control laws have been liberalized?

The assault-weapons ban passed in 1994 and was in effect for ten years. The paradigmatic school shooting took place at Columbine High School in 1999. Why didn’t the assault-weapons ban prevent it?

There have been hundreds of murders with guns this year in Chicago, where gun laws are restrictive. What new gun laws does the city need to stop the tide of mayhem? There have been hundreds more in New York City, where the mayor is the foremost anti-gun scold in the country. What new gun laws does New York need? 

Why aren’t violent crimes routinely committed at gun ranges teeming with people who own multiple weapons, some of them quite dangerous-looking, and who enjoy shooting them?

Why do gun-free-school laws never succeed in stopping lunatics bent on murder from taking guns to schools?

NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre proposed posting armed police officers at schools in his widely derided press conference last week. Would you feel at least a little bit better if an armed officer were guarding your child’s school? Please be honest.

In places where gun laws are the tightest, why do so many people own guns anyway? In your zeal against guns, do you favor stop-and-frisk policies to catch people carrying illegal guns in major urban areas?

In your view, to make a public policy worth pursuing, should it have a discernible connection to its stated goal? Or is it enough that the policy be well-intentioned and opposed by the NRA? Actually, there’s no need to answer that. It’s obvious enough already. 

is "paradigmatic" a word?

is "paradigmatic" a word?

yes

"The assault-weapons ban passed in 1994 and was in effect for ten years. The paradigmatic school shooting took place at Columbine High School in 1999. Why didn’t the assault-weapons ban prevent it?"

Interesting point..........

"The assault-weapons ban passed in 1994 and was in effect for ten years. The paradigmatic school shooting took place at Columbine High School in 1999. Why didn’t the assault-weapons ban prevent it?"

Interesting point..........

Wasn't a TEC-9 involved with that and some AWB talk from the left pursued...can't recall?

"The assault-weapons ban passed in 1994 and was in effect for ten years. The paradigmatic school shooting took place at Columbine High School in 1999. Why didn’t the assault-weapons ban prevent it?"

Interesting point..........

i also believe one of the weapons used was banned by name in the ban, a tec-9.


granted, the old AWB allowed for transfer of grandfathered weapons, this new one currently doesnt. 


but still, its rather ironic.

I'm telling you, liberal ideas are never wrong, their ideas are just not implemented correctly.  From Soviet Communism to assault weapons bans, they were all great ideas that were improperly or insufficiently implemented.  That's the only way they can continue to propose the same thing expecting different results without diagnosing their own insanity.

Because the only reason that it didn't work was the gov't didn't spend enough money on it the first time.

I'm telling you, liberal ideas are never wrong, they're just not implemented correctly.  From Soviet Communism to assault weapons bans, they were all great ideas that were improperly or insufficiently implemented.  That's the only way they can continue to propose the same thing expecting different results without diagnosing their own insanity.

So true...the dems would say the 1994 ban didn't accomplish the intended goal is because it was sunseted and needed more time to produce the intended outcome. I've heard some of them suggest that as the reason.

Liberalism is, in it's current form, nothing more than disguised totalitarianism. And totalitarianism is about implementing utopia here on earth.

The statist/liberal agenda will rear its ugly head over and over because what they're really trying to correct and control is human nature itself. Human beings are flawed and thus incompatible with utopian mindsets, i.e, liberalism. The irony is that you have imperfect beings (liberals) trying to create a perfect society. I guess they haven't figured out that perfection cannot arise from imperfection.