[This month, I'm serializing my 2003 Harvard Law Review article, The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope.]
"[T]he assault weapons ban is a symbolic—purely symbolic—move in [the] direction [of disarming the citizenry]," wrote columnist Charles Krauthammer, a proponent of a total gun ban. "Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation …. De-escalation begins with a change in mentality …. The real steps, like the banning of handguns, will never occur unless this one is taken first …."
