Adam Lanza's violent shooting spree — in which he took three legally obtained guns from his mother's home to kill 27 women and small children — has launched Americans into a heated debate on gun control.

While Senator Dianne Feinstein pledges to introduce an assault weapons ban bill on the first day of Congress to prevent future tragedies, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert told FOX News that if teachers were armed with M-4s, the Sandy Hook shooting never would have reached its final body count.

As the debate rages on, it's interesting to take a look at how Bushmaster, the gun company that made the AR-15 assault rifle Lanza used, advertised the semiautomatic to the masses. Mother Jones found the following jarring ad in an issue of Maxim:

The bottom of the ad reads, "If it's good enough for the professional, it's good enough for you."

Robert VerBruggen at the National Review writes that the call to increase gun control over said AR-15 is ridiculous, bemoaning the fact that the assault rifle in question isn't that impressive anyway.

"I am doubtful that these reforms would do much to curb gun violence. An 'assault weapon' fires at the same rate as an ordinary semiautomatic rifle, and the .223-caliber ammo in Lanza’s rifle is banned for deer hunting in some states on the grounds that it’s too weak," VerBruggen wrote.

To which Amanda Marcotte at Slate readily responded, "Ah yes, the ammo is too weak. (Never mind that an adult deer weighs around 250 pounds and a child around 40.)"

The AR-15 was actually one of 19 semiautomatic weapons banned by Congress in 1994, which expired in 2004.

Click here to see Mother Jones' collection of astounding gun ads from various makers.