FishingCabin, you've hit on a big part of the intellectual dishonesty of the banners. While shocking, abhorrent and vile, the attack at Sandy Hook, or at Columbine, was still a very rare event. The media plays it up, over and over, and together with the shock value the sheer repetition cements it into people's minds that these are a frequent, exigent problem that requires immediate action.
Ok, but more than 10 times as many people drown annually than are killed by rifles of any kind. i'd wager that of the 4000 drownings, a high percentage are children. But nobody is rallying to eradicate swimming pools. More than twice as many are killed by hands and feet, but nobody wants to ban karate lessons. So the uproar certainly isn't about the number of dead, or even that they were children. As Rahm said, never let a good crisis go to waste.
The final piece is: our legislators, by and large, are generally well educated and intelligent, not stupid people. They know that criminals don't obey the laws, by definition and by action. They KNOW that more gun laws will only affect the law-abiding, not the guy who buys his stolen Glock from the trunk of Vladimir's (insert gang name of choice) car. And they don't care. They forge ahead blithely, perpetuating the myth that more laws will somehow stop crazed maniacs. It's the agenda, stupid (not you of course, just borrowing the phrase...
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That is intellectual dishonesty.
