Trying, again, to ban assault weapons

The 2011 shootings of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other people in Tucson didn't move the political needle. This summer's shocking massacre of 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater was scarcely noticed in the halls of Congress. Yet backers of gun control apparently see signs that the blood-spattered halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 young children were killed Friday, will finally horrify and appall our nation's leaders enough to prompt action against the tools of mass murder.

December 18, 2012