I am a former assault rifle owner and this article, shared around and around and around by "non-gun owners" that "don't understand guns", is purest tripe.

Here's the thing - we did that. It was super ineffective. Here's what happened:

1) Liberals everywhere celebrated a victory over the evil gun lobby and triumph in the post-orgasmic glow of striking a blow for truth, justice, and the safety of our children

2) Manufacturers everywhere increased production of everything banned to eleven

3) Gun owners everywhere hoarded everything banned by the dozens

4) The ban went into effect and all the banned stuff sold out at the gun shops

5) Gun shows, completely immune from any law that anyone might want to pass, enjoyed a preposterously marked-up secondary market on all the things everyone was supposedly not capable of buying anymore

6) People still died by the score.

That big fuckin' spike between '94 and '04? When high-capacity mags were ostensibly illegal? That's Columbine, Kip Kinkel and crew. Meanwhile, show me the assault weapons ban on this graph:

You want mass gun deaths to go down? Get rid of the secondary market. I bought an SKS, two 30-round mags and 1400 rounds of armor-piercing ammo for $200 after the AWB. That armor-piercing ammo? Went from 7 cents a round to a buck as soon as Thomson made a Contender chambered for 7.62x39, thereby making it "pistol ammo" and a violation of the NFA.

But it still wasn't illegal.

Check it out. "Black talon" ammo.

Half measures are ineffective. Empty gestures are ineffective. And assault weapons deaths are still a tiny portion of gun deaths in the United States. Banning the scary guns might curb the headlines, but people will still die by the score.

Personally? I say levy a "mental health tax" of $2 per round on 7.62, .308, .223 and 9mm. The citizens will start hand loading, the crazies'll have to save up and maybe, just maybe, the Evil Black Guns will starve.

Nobody has ever committed mass murder with 460 weatherby mag.