Azathoth loves the poor, and misery is his favorite relish!

I had thought all the priests of this order were gone, defrocked. Does their particular brand of piety still get reaffirmed by course of habit, or has some new sect of True Believers risen to take their place?

Whatever the reason behind it, we've seen once again the rearing of the ugly head of a policy that, while standard issue in the sicklier trees in the grove, has never quite caught on close to the geographic center of the Cathedral. A half-assed implementation was tried in 1994, but was quietly sidelined when the law expired.

Azathothian capital-P Progress reacts to tragedy by finding something or someone safe and easy to blame, in lieu of doing anything actually effective to help solve the problem or prevent it from occurring again. What is most curious about this particular instance, is, that with more than 105 million guns being sold since the Assault Weapons Ban sunset, I'm not sure that this is such an easy target. In 1994, gun enthusiasts were normally hunters, but since then, much has changed. Not only has the number of active hunters declined, but the number of gun enthusiasts has risen, and the "scary military rifles" of 1994 are the hunting rifles of 2012.

So the number of folks whose jimmies would get rustled by such legislation is much higher in 2012 than it was in 1994. How do the democrats think they'll get away with such legislation?

Well, in the case of Obama in particular, it's his last term and thus time to piss everyone off. But, in the case of other leftist politicians, I think the election results were pretty clear: Screw men, women are the only voting block we need. Fifty Shades of Grey-reading soccer moms will turn out in droves to support legislation that promises however falsely to protect their precious babies, so term-unlimited congressmen can reasonably expect to come back to pre-warmed leather office chairs in 2014. Bureaucrats, of course, will remain unaffected whatever happens, but they are still normally reluctant to sacrifice their elected puppets for no reason whatsoever.

The American militia movement has basically demonstrated that it'll put up with anything the Left has thus far thrown at them, having put up with two elections of a black man as president, the passing of the healthcare bill, and the continued financial ruination of their country's economy without violent incident. Maybe a gun ban would be the match in the powder-room, but I doubt it, and so does the Left.

So, then, we might actually see another scary looking gun ban pushed through. Well, that would make me sad, but what does that actually mean for the country?

Well, in short, it won't remove an avenue by which tyranny can be kept in check, and it won't solve the problem of crazy people going on rampages, either.

What will it do? Force the poor to rely on strong, aggressive males for defense.

With effective weapons like AR-15s and Glocks out of the picture (I'm imagining the worst kind of ban, here), poor people will have to resort to swords, knives, clubs and other primitive weapons that are only effective in the hands of strong, aggressive men. The elite, of course, can just move away from crime, hire armed bodyguards, drive everywhere, and apply for the now-rare permit to carry a handgun (which, itself, is now three or four times as expensive as before the ban). The poor, however, don't have any of those options, and must instead rely on a more medieval structure for defense.

Once again, Progressivism proves itself the poor's best friend (in the same way that a casino owner is the best friend of a habitual gambler).

postscript:

It's salient, I think, that progs today actually believe that inanimate objects can cause people to be evil. They can't say it that way, of course, because they're currently pimping an image of rationality (maybe in a half-century or so they'll be pushing faith, and we'll get some really funny protests), but it's still a pretty good indicator that we're experiencing a third Renaissance (or maybe one big continuous one).