The Post has been beating this drum for a long time. But when the federal "assault weapon" ban was enacted in 1994, the paper's editorial board was a little more honest about the point of it. While "it's ridiculous that the banning should even be an issue," the Post said then, "no one should have any illusions about what was accomplished. Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control." The mechanism for achieving "broader gun control" is the recognition that "assault weapons" account for a tiny share of gun homicides and that many other firearms are just as deadly—points that advocates of a ban are keen to obscure for the time being.
Read the complete article: Reason