[WS:] This seems to be a ruse typical of the US political discourse - propose a measure that looks tough on paper but is meaningless in practice. According to this piece http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/2012121973233283925.html
"The state law addresses the cosmetic features of semi-automatic rifles, but not their firepower. To violate the ban, Lanza's gun had to have included "a folding or telescoping stock, a bayonet mount, a grenade launcher or a flash suppressor, a device typically screwed on to the end of the muzzle to limit the bright flash caused by gunpowder that ignites outside of the muzzle", the Courant reported. " "And Feinstein's proposed assault weapons ban attempts to outlaw something that doesn't exist. There is no such thing as an "assault weapon", Robert Crook, head of the Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, told the Courant. They are a "media invention", he said. "These are semi-automatic firearms that have military cosmetic characteristics. They look like our military firearms, but they're not."
In this whole debate, Carrol's question: "How would a gun control law be enforced, given the current number of guns in private hands?" sums it up - all this gun regulation is empty talk, "sandbox politics" to borrow his phrase, given the reality on the ground.
For most outsiders (myself included) coming to a close contact with the American culture, the infatuation with guns is one of the most salient and also puzzling features of that culture. I am not talking only about actual gun ownership, but also, and more importantly, how guns are depicted in the popular culture here. To make a long story short - try to compare the depiction of fighting in the films produced by Hollywood and Bollywood. In Bollywood films, most of fighting scenes are choreographed dances in which people jump around and are pushed around, but nobody really dies. In Hollywood films, square jawed men run with impressively looking guns in their hands (it is difficult not to think of these objects as phallic symbols) and blast everyone away in the most gory way possible. If you go to a typical video rental outlet (albeit these tend to be rare nowadays) you will find that this type of Hollywood "action" movies accounts for the majority of the titles on the shelf. This in itself tells volumes.
This is not to imply that these films, or availability of guns, "cause" violence etc. I suspect that such claims are a strawman invented by the gun lobby for polemic purposes. Instead, this demonstrates that gun ownership and cultural imagery associated with it is deeply ingrained in the American culture - as American as apple pie as they say it here - and anything running against that cultural trope is automatically dismissed by the great majority of the population. What may appear as a reasonable position to a European, is seen as unrealistic or simply weird by most Americans - especially males, as gun is a phallic symbol and cultural representation of virility. It is no coincidence that people - mostly men - who feel emasculated use guns to "restore" their virility by shooting bullets (symbolic representation of ejaculation) at others. It is just a way of compensating for their "limp dick" image that others have of them with using a gun as a "mechanical action phallus" to display their virility and in some rare circumstances to get back at their tormentors. Taking their guns away in any form hints at emasculation and even castration - and they will go to any length to rationalize their right to own guns.
So this is why any conversation on gun regulation is "sandbox politics" in the US - empty talk and smoke and mirrors. To be sure, no gun regulation that falls short of outright confiscation is likely to prevent mass shootings given the fact that the US is flooded with all kinds of fire arms. Regulation may work in European countries where gun ownership is limited for the most part to simple hunting rifles and maybe pistols which are unlikely to produce the kind of carnage that we recently witnessed. Restricting access to more powerful weapons will indeed make it far more difficult to obtain them, especially by deranged individuals. But it is not going to work in the US, because such weapons are already widely available so regulating them will have little effect unless accompanied by aggressive confiscation. And this is not likely to happen because of the second amendment and because of a string support of the great majority of the US population of gun ownership.
The way I look at this is similar, to borrow a phrase from HL Mencken, to a man going to a zoo. You watch, you may even get upset by the sight of a chicken being devoured by a python, but at the end of the day you realize that this is the way things are and there is nothing you can do about it except staying out of it as much as possible, For as soon as you try to save that poor chicken you will be reprimanded or worse.
Have a good day and god bless America
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."