If the future is going to be based on knee-jerk reactions to "tragedies" we can expect to be strangers in a strange land within a few years.
Isn't that how the recent past worked?
Let's take an imaginary stroll into the future. It's late 2009 when a deranged wacko with an AK-47 strolls into a school, or shopping mall, or some other "Gun Free Zone" and opens fire, killing several and wounding many more. The media coverage is wall-to-wall. Each of the four major networks and the cable outlets make the "Assault Weapons Crisis" their lead. The coverage even overshadows the recent drug overdose death of a once-promising former child actor.
Matthew Bracken's "Enemies: Foreign and Domestic" and "Domestic Enemies" already covered a very similar plotline...
Although, in his novel, more and more onerous bills were passed, beyond the ban on semiautos...