Serious gun control advocates know very well that no guns that were "on the street" pre-ban were actually banned/seized, and that cosmetic look-alikes have been produced and imported by the hundreds of thousands every year since then. This means that the population of such firearms is what it was plus a few million. Yet, somehow, we don't have bloodbaths in the streets of this country every day (the last one I remember occurred on a rather memorable September day in 2001, and involved not one firearm of any type.
These people are bald-faced liars. Knowing all of this, they continue to bleat for extending the ban, both in time and in scope and, ultimately, they pine for confiscation. Yet none of them have the courage to say that this is their ultimate goal, let alone to try to personally put it into effect. More hypocritically, I'd bet that most of these enemies of liberty own firearms themselves (and wouldn't we all like to know if Josh Sugermann owns his own Bushmaster or AK?).
LISTEN UP, BUSH CAMPAIGN - If GWB doesn't fight the renewal/extension effort, let alone if he goes along with it, then he's lost my vote. And I say this as someone who enthusiastically voted for him. His father lost my vote in '92 because of the '89 import ban, and I have no compunction about staying home in November of 2004.