http://www.nationalreview.com/node/425110/print Hillary’s Gun-Control Non Sequiturs
By Rich Lowry — October 6, 2015
Hillary Clinton has a new gun agenda that is the same as the old gun agenda.
We all are appalled and heartsick over the country’s mass shootings, which aren’t any less shocking for their routine occurrence. But that doesn’t mean we know how to stop them. The Pavlovian Democratic reaction is to offer a raft of familiar gun-control proposals, whether or not they have any bearing on mass shootings.
Hillary’s ideas are a testament to the essential sterility of the gun debate, no matter how much heat it generates. There is no way around the fact that marginal changes will do little or nothing to stop mass killers, while more sweeping changes — even if they were practicable or wise — run afoul of the Second Amendment.
Among other things, Clinton wants to renew the assault-weapons ban, which we had for 10 years before it lapsed in 2004. The ban never made any sense, and a push to revive it is nostalgia for a meaningless gesture. To review: A so-called assault weapon is a semi-automatic rifle tricked out with frightening-looking cosmetic features. It is functionally indistinguishable from any other semi-automatic rifle.
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