Then talk shifted to so-called “assault weapons” — particular kinds of semiautomatic weapons — partly because these too were seen as unusual and not generally owned by law-abiding people. Quite a few states and cities have indeed banned sales of such weapons, as did the federal government (for newly manufactured) weapons from 1994 to 2004. Of course, especially now, such “assault weapons” are actually pretty common, but bans on them are still being proposed.

And of course now things have moved on: Now we’re hearing calls for bans on sale or home possession of semiautomatic weapons generally. Consider, for instance, Thomas Friedman’s column in the New York Times this week; Damon Linker’s article for The Week this week, though apparently limited to semiautomatic rifles; the Media Matters article hopefully noting a poll of Latinos that showed support for a ban on “semi-automatic and assault weapons” (the polling organization itself characterized the position as “ban semi-automatic weapons”).

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These proposals aren’t entirely new; President Obama, when he was a candidate for the Illinois legislature in 1998, said he’d support a ban on semiautomatic weapons. But I’ve been hearing them more and more often — even though semiautomatic guns likely represent close to half of the guns out there in the country. These aren’t calls for restricting supposedly narrow categories of guns that are allegedly used predominantly by criminals. These are calls for banning the sorts of guns that tens of millions of law-abiding Americans have in their homes.