...Oh, there was a lot of sound-bite mugging for the cameras. But in terms of law and order, this is a non-event. The gun ban was always a cosmetic exercise, a symbolic attempt by Democrats in the early Clinton years to scare suburban voters and show they could defeat the National Rifle Association. So they managed to outlaw a handful of semi-automatic weapons, though with a simple modification or two those same weapons could be made legal again. Criminals have hardly been at a loss for firepower. "We agree that the 1994 law is ineffective," Kristen Rand, a leading gun-controller,...