More clueless editorials

The New York Times, as might have been expected, weighs in on the gun ban issue:

In spraying bullets from military-style, semiautomatic assault rifles, a deranged 28-year-old gunman in Alabama this week killed ten people and wounded six others before fatally shooting himself. In a sane world, this bloody rampage— the latest in a string of mass homicides, including the gun massacres at Columbine High School in 1999 and Virginia Tech in 2007— would at last persuade Congress to reinstate, in tightened form, the national assault weapons ban that it let expire in 2004.
But this is not a sane world, at least not on Capitol Hill, where the National Rifle Association still wields far too much power for the country’s good. In February, the Senate approved an amendment that would abolish not only an assault-weapons ban, but other gun control laws already on the books in the District of Columbia— including reasonable rules on gun registration and trigger locks. This dangerous provision was attached to an overdue bill that would give the District of Columbia a voting member in the House of Representatives.
The NRA has now moved its formidable lobbying campaign to the House. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader, said last week that he did not have the votes to bring the District of Columbia bill to the floor without opening the possibility that the weapons amendment would be added. That was before the murders in Alabama. At this sad point, surely, Mr. Hoyer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ought to be able to muster enough votes to stand up to the gun lobby and its threat to the safety and democratic rights of the citizens of the nation’s capital. Surely they can provide that leadership.

Rico says they always trot out that "reasonable rules" shit, as if we're supposed to believe that they are, indeed, reasonable... (Though their use of the trite and false phrase 'assault rifle' should be a clue as to where they stand on the issue.)