Interesting article, with an equally interesting take on the history of "weapons of war" in civilian hands.

Interesting, further, is that in the Old West (a time that some gun control advocates look to as an example of effectivness in gun control measures) crime such as rape and robberies occurred at a much lower rate than in modern America—certainly lower than in the 1970s and 1980s, when the nation was wracked by a surge in criminality. It is also worth noting that crime and gun violence has fallen steeply since the 1990s, even as gun ownership has increased dramatically.

For those who are advocates of restricting or eliminating gun ownership, there should be an understanding that the more one writes about the evils of the oft-misnomered "assault weapons" the more sales of those guns increase. Now, I am admittedly a supporter of the Second Amendment and a member of the NRA, but I also believe in "reasonable" restrictions on gun ownership, as does most of my friends who are also NRA members.

It's these factors that many of us point to while we urge the discussion of how to address the senseless killing of innocent lives to focus more on the behavioral issues of mass murderers and slightly less on the efficacy of the instruments they use to kill.