The Assault Weapons Ban of 2018 is the feel-good, we-have-to-do-something move. I'm all for it if it will make a positive difference. But it won't. We already know that it won't because of the 1994 assault weapons ban.

Remember how excited your mother was in 1994? "Honey," she said, "finally we're doing something about crime." She did have a point since crime had been rising steadily through the eighties and early nineties. The ban seemed like a good idea at the time, and darn it if FBI crime statistics didn't prove her right. (You hate it when that happens.) From 1994 to 2004, the violent crime rate dropped 35 percent.

When the Department of Justice released statistics about firearms homicides specifically, your mother was even more sure of herself. In 1993, the year before the ban took effect, there were 18,253 firearm homicides.