It is easier to peel off a smaller segment of the firearm population, those who own those 'eeeevil loooking' "assault weapons" which wet the panties of the average liberal, and will unfortunately still be thrown under the bus by the occasional Fudd out there who thinks his rifles will be safe if he sacrifices yours.
They can point back and say" see, if the AWB had still been in place...", ignoring the restrictions some jurisdictions have already placed on them, and even though the semiautomatic rifle is used in fewer crimes than virtually any other class of firearms (muzzleloaders, .50 BMG, and serious competitive target rifles may be the exceptions).
Facts don't matter, their goal is their god and in their minds even the truth must bend before that.
Remember your Alinsky, and even the rhetoric falls into place.
Except that it was the Feds and their liberal press who were initially pushing the "4 handguns and handguns only" meme until the ME and the state police held their news conference and set everyone straight.
And yet we still have supposedly intelligent people who claim that the Feds and their liberal press can't be trusted out of one side of their brain and yet trusting them out of the other. They're just stuck on stupid.