The assault weapons ban was allowed to expire because there was no evidence that it had produced any real impact on the total number of homicides involving uses of the banned firearms and large-capacity magazines. Ban proponents objected, saying ten years wasn’t enough time to produce results. Looking back over the ten years after the ban expired, it looks like they still wouldn’t have had any results; the banned firearms still account for only a very small percentage of homicides.

Incidentally, the usual definition of a mass shooting is one where there are four or more deaths, not including the killer. The figure Mr. Reich used was employed by Louis Klarevas, a teacher at the University of Massachusetts, to show a major decline when there really wasn’t one.

Mass shootings, as notorious as they may be, account for only a fraction of a percent of total homicides. Comparing the CDC reports of homicides during the 1985–2014 period, we find that total murders dropped about 19.5% between the ten years from 1985–1994 and the period from 1995–2004 (the Assault Weapons Ban didn’t become effective until the end of 1994 and expired at the end of 2004). The decline continued after the ban expired falling to its lowest point in more than 50 years in 2014 – in spite of a huge gun-buying frenzy from 2008 to about 2012. During that entire period, mass shooting deaths accounted for 0.16% of total firearm-related murders.

The fatal flaw in the original Assault Weapons Ban was that it grandfathered in all of the banned guns and high-capacity magazines that were already owned on the ban’s effective date and the government allowed manufacturers to sell existing inventory.

Yes, the framers’ goal was to permit a well-regulated militia – by ensuring that armed citizens were available to be called. In order to achieve that goal, they forbade the government from infringing on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.

In every other Amendment that refers to “the people” it means the right of the individual. After all, it would be silly to say that the First Amendment applies only to groups.

James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, was highly literate and well-educated. He was also an experienced legislator. It is impossible to believe that Madison didn’t know what he was writing or that others couldn’t understand it. Even today, 226 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified and became part of the Constitution, it’s difficult to comprehend how anyone could question its clarity. As one who had studied the law and had had extensive dealings with crafting legislation, Madison surely knew the difference between a prefatory clause and an operative clause and was well aware of where he inserted the comma.

Reich’s invocation of the militia argument is based on an interpretation of the Second Amendment that has been dismissed by the Supreme Court in case after case. Decisions all indicate that the framers of the Constitution considered the right to keep and bear arms to be an individual right. The majority opinion written by the late Antonin Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller (544 U.S. 570 – 2008) is just the latest example of that. An in-depth study of the Second Amendment was undertaken by the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution in 1982. While they are fairly long, both are well worth reading.

Some collective right interpreters often cite the decision in United States v. Miller (307 U.S. 174 – 1939) to justify the militia interpretation. However, it actually had nothing at all to do with collective versus individual rights. In fact, the court reiterated the belief that the Second Amendment referred to an individual right. The explanation gets long but the short version is that the court determined only that a sawed-off shotgun was not the type of firearm in common use in the militia at that time and was therefore it was not covered by the Second Amendment. The court upheld the National Firearms Act of 1934’s requirements for registering such firearms with the federal government. One important fact about the Miller decision: the defendant, Jack Miller, died before the case came before the Supreme Court and there was no opposing counsel present so it was pretty much a government win by default.

Associate Justice James C. McReynolds penned the Court’s decision. In it he wrote: “In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

The comparison to Australia is just cherry-picking and more verbal jiu-jitsu. In the first place, the Australians never intended to reduce the number of privately owned firearms. The goal of the program was to collect certain types of firearms that had been declared illegal. Mr. Reich limits the comparison to just the firearm homicide rate, while ignoring the total homicide rate, which once again paints a different picture. The homicide rate from 1997 to 2003 dropped 6.3% while the comparable rate in the U.S. fell 14.5%. This indicates that Australian murderers simply found other weapons.

There is certainly support for stronger gun laws: with the barrage of media and political posturing, it would be almost a miracle if there wasn’t. Coupled with most people’s desire to give the kind of response they think the pollster wants, it’s not surprising to see big numbers.

In the real world, popular support isn’t as widespread. Efforts to enact universal background check laws in a number of states have had mixed results. The largest margin of victory in a referendum was about 60% while similar measures in other states had lower margins or failed. States where the laws passed tended to have larger, more liberal urban populations. Legislators in more conservative states tend to avoid the expense of a referendum, knowing that it would fail.

What makes the NRA different from the others is the fact that it is composed of dues-paying members who provide the majority of its revenue – more than 60%, according to the NRA’s Form 990, which is submitted to the IRS. The majority of the income from manufacturers comes in paid advertising in the NRA’s various publications and Internet sites. Only about 18% of total revenue comes from grants or gifts. Since both corporate and individual gifts are included in that figure, it’s really impossible to tell how much comes from each source through publicly available records.

On the other side, Everytown for Gun Safety is largely supported by Michael Bloomberg, who has been known to lavish millions on advertising, elections and legislative influence. He has committed tens of millions of dollars to oppose a single piece of legislation. The Violence Policy Center is almost entirely supported by grants and the Giffords Law Center relies on donations, gifts and grants. All claims to the contrary, these are not grass-roots organizations.

What Mr. Reich doesn’t know, or more likely doesn’t want to acknowledge, is that the firearms industry has its own lobbying and trade organization, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.