I mean I know the answer, I just wanna hear them say it. I would accept any of the following and maybe some others

1. Assault weapons ban is an easy 'win' for the Democrats because it will never get passed but it can make it look like they tried

2. People only care when affluent (especially white) kids get shot, no one cares about all the impoverished children killing each other with handguns

3. The media (WaPo included) over-covers school shootings, which increases the issue due to giving fame to shooters and promoting copy cats. Since most people in the US who live outside of cities don't see the coverage about the thousands of dead kids from handguns, they just don't care.

4. The average middle class American lives in an area where school shootings are more likely than handgun fueled gang violence and again, only care about issues that effect them and not their fellow Americans with the least support for their own success

5. The crime epidemic in the cities is directly related to the failed War on Drugs and it's policy of mass incarceration but no one wants to end either because the government on both sides profits from this. Also, no one wants to fund schools or after-school programs to give these kids in a role-model-vacuum a positive course for their lives because it's easier and cheaper to ban assault weapons and let everyone think the problem is solved

6. Elected officials think voters are stupid so they propose overly-generalized solutions to incredibly complex problems in order to pacify the masses