[zzzeek]

The scale and total harmfulness of a mass murder incident is increased dramatically with access to weapons designed and manufactured for military personnel to kill as many people as possible with maximally engineered effectiveness.

In China, where guns are generally (if not totally) banned, they've had a problem with citizens going on murderous rampages in schools with swords and knives. So yes, the lack of guns is not necessarily decreasing murderous intent. But look at something interesting: all 22 victims of the most recent China rampage survived (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/12/14/china-sc...). If this man had a bushmaster, he'd have done a lot better.

Murder with highly refined weapons of war is much more effective than murder without. Removing assault weapons designed for wars would not necessarily decrease the count of incidents but would decrease the harmfulness of those incidents.