You're welcome to tally the gun crime rate contribution of the Russian Mafia to the overall U.S. numbers.

AK-47s aren't the problem. The guns defined as "assault weapons," or "military-style weapons," are rarely used in crimes in the U.S., unless you stretch the definition to include semi-automatic handguns. Assault weapons, as they were defined under the Federal ban, account for somewhere between 2 and 8 percent of all gun crimes. Rifles of any kind were involved in about 4 percent of all gun murders in 2010. That was in one of those "meticulously documented irrelevancies" you chose to ignore. So was the fact that the guns used in this recent crime would have been legal under the former ban, and were also legal under Connecticut's still-existing assault weapons law.

Hell, Mexico has much stricter gun laws than we do. How's that working?

Go ahead. Pass another assault weapons ban. If the goal is more political power, it's important to be seen by the voters as "doing something." Give the idiots in Washington the authority to beat the ladder that fell over and broke someone's neck. Meanwhile, ignore the reasons people are actually killing each other.

At the very beginning of the conversation here, Mary Anne pointed out what would have to be actually done to reduce the number of weapons in this country significantly.

Go for it.