A rare moment of clarity arose during yesterday’s State of the Union interview with Senator Richard Blumenthal, after Candy Crowley challenged the gun-control advocate on the usefulness of the gun-control bill making its way through the Senate at the moment, which Blumenthal admits — implicitly, if not explicitly — would have done nothing to stop the tragedy Democrats keep exploiting to push it (via NRO’s Eliana Johnson):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9rabZESiiwA

“How would anything in the bill, as it currently stands, have stopped anything that went on in Newtown?” Crowley asked. “The majority leader has assured me and other proponents of these measures that we can offer amendments on both the assault-weapons ban and the prohibition on high-capacity magazines, so there will be both,” Blumenthal responded, adding that he intends to offer an amendment that would ban high-capacity magazines.

Actually, nothing in the original proposal would have prevented it, either.  Don’t forget that Connecticut already had an “assault weapon” ban in place at the time of the shooting.  Blumenthal should know this — he was Attorney General for several years in the state.  How effective was that law in preventing the Sandy Hook shooting? Better yet, how many prosecutions did Blumenthal bring to enforce that existing law in Connecticut?  Whether that number is zero or a thousand, it didn’t do anything to stop someone intent on committing mass murder, and I’d suspect that the number is closer to the former than the latter.

Blumenthal tries to avoid the question by talking about amendments for other measures, specifically to limit magazine size. The high-capacity magazine ban would only have worked if one expects six- and seven-year-olds to rush a shooter while he’s reloading.  The expanded background checks won’t do it, either, mainly because the current background checks worked. The shooter attempted to buy his own guns but got stopped by the background checks in place, at which point he did what most criminals do to procure firearms … he stole them. And let’s not forget that the federal government almost never follows up on failed background checks, which might actually prevent deaths.

Basically, the bill intends to offer a public-relations win for politicians while limiting the freedom of the law-abiding and doing nothing at all to improve public safety.