This is precisely how it happened, truth is told.
Completely unable to do anything useful about the Crack epidemic of the late 80s, the Bush Administration made a big sideshow about 'assault weapons', thinking that the NRA was just about skeet guns and huntin' rifles and wouldn't protest. The FBI reported to the White House that dangerous 'Gangsta Rap' albums had lyrics of slinging drugs and guns, and the safety of law enforcement all over the nation was at stake unless we rid the streets of assault rifles that were used in 0.01% of violent crimes.
Today, every inner city Skid Row bum from the late 80s who was hooked on crack is dead, and phony 'gangsta rapper' Ice Cube makes second rate 'Daddy takes his kids on a comical cross country trip' family movies full of wacky hijinx. Yet, get caught with a flash suppressor on a post-1989 imported semi-auto target rifle that doesn't have 10 domestically produced parts, and the ATF will try to put you in jail for 10 years and give you a $250,000 fine. If the same damned gun has 10 domestically produced parts and is otherwise indistinguishable, oh that's good to go! Fire away to your heart's content!
William Bennett is an asshole.
George Bush and the NRA, here's a snippet:
By the end of the Reagan Presidency, Ronald Reagans declining faculties had made him almost irrelevant to the Machiavellian policy-making going on in the White House. Attorney General Edwin Meesenot exactly a libertarianwas getting ready to have the administration endorse Senator Howard Metzenbaums bill to ban plastic handguns. (Theres no such thing, but the Metzenbaum bill would have outlawed many thousands of small, all-metal handguns, such as derringers, which were claimed to be invisible to airport metal detectors.)