A puzzled Blitzer pressed Johnson, seeking clarity on the Republican senator's distinction between banned fully-automatic weapons and the legally purchased semi-automatic rifle used by shooter Omar Mateen. "The AR-15 that was used in this terror attack, killing 49 people, you wouldn't describe that as an assault weapon?" Blitzer asked. "You're differentiating between that and a fully automatic assault weapon? Because that weapon certainly did kill a lot of people." "So do bombs," Johnson replied. "So there are other ways that terrorists can slaughter people."
You are not allowed to own a bomb, or carry a bomb on your back while visiting your neighborhood Chipotle. Not even if you claim you need a bomb for self-protection, or because you're afraid there are other people out there with other bombs who might try to bomb you first. We're not stupid, after all. You cannot buy ready-made bombs at Walmart, because Walmart is not allowed to sell ready-made mass murder devices. Even those Americans that are permitted to own and operate bombs (for example, for excavation purposes) face very, very tight state and federal regulations and restrictions; as for the rest of us, outside of military service we are allowed to be in personal possession of a mass-murder-sized bomb approximately never. Perhaps because America has bomb control, our nation faces no epidemic of bomb-related mass murders. There are some -- most in recent decades perpetrated by radical far-right groups against government targets or as part of anti-abortion extremism -- but we do not have bombs going off on a daily basis in cities around the nation, the bodies piling up in our trauma centers and in our morgues while our politicians wonder what, if anything, should be done. That would seem to offer at least some evidence that our "bomb controls" are, despite the continued ability of some very small band of lunatics to create bombs despite the obstacles we have thrust in their way, working.