What is interesting is when the Brady Campaign was still doing business as Hangun Control Inc.(1981), they put out a statement that they had no interest in controling long guns, only handguns.
At that time you could get new full auto registered firearms, imported AK-47s and a whole slew of semi-auto military style rifles not abailable today.
There was a time that democrats weren't all totally rabid about gun ownership.
In fact, many of them held beliefs and exhibited behavior that seems almost sane compared to the gang of idiotic socialist gun weenies passing for democrats today.
Hubert Humphrey former Senator, Vice President and 1968 Democrat presidential nominee:
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced.
But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."
(from "Know Your Lawmakers", Guns Magazine, Page 4, Feb. 1960)
Sigmund Freud, a perennial democrat favorite because of his views on open sexuality, had this to say about the kind of gun weenies that surround us today.:
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity."
("General Introduction to Psychoanalysis," S. Freud)