This was to be expected because on his way out of the door, Jeff Flake has jettisoned all pretense of being anything other than a less masculine version of Susan Collins.

A kid too young buy a handgun should be too young to buy an #AR15. Working with @SenFeinstein on a bipartisan bill that will raise the minimum purchase age for non-military buyers from 18 to 21 – the same age you currently have to be to purchase a handgun.

— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) February 21, 2018

How in the name of heaven does this even work? What happens when Colt renames it the AR-43? How does this affect any of the dozens of knock-offs of the AR-15? Because remember the hysteria we went through over the weapon of choice of the Beltway Sniper and the Newtown shooter, the Bushmaster .223.

Quick plea for help: One of these two rifles terrifies the editors of the flailing @nytimes and MUST BE BANNED RIGHT NOW FOR THE CHILDREN.
The other is a bit of Americana that, publicly and today at least, is not a problem.
Why? Are they dumb or disingenuous? Or both? pic.twitter.com/TXpXpyihkp

— Tom Maguire (@Tom_Maguire) February 21, 2018

This whole premise is just stupid. I’ve written a couple of posts on the subject of the “scary gun ban,” which is what this boils down to. These clowns are trying to restrict sales of a particular model of weapon when it possesses an operating system very much like most rifles have today.

I don’t see how making it illegal for Nikolas Cruz to have an AR-15 changes anything. There are literally hundreds of models of semiautomatic rifle on the market. And if you go after the gas blowback mechanism, there are other rifles that use a different mechanism but fire nearly as fast as semiautomatics. Like this pump action .223 rifle.

But we have to “do something.” Rarely, in any situation other then when you are pinned down by enemy fire, does “do something” produce a useful outcome.