The snipers are caught, the weapon found. The debate over gun control will now continue, probably even intensify. All of the major media outlets report that the .223 Bushmaster AR-15 clone proven to be the murder weapon is an "assault rifle", even though it is not capable of automatic fire. It's quite apparent that they're happy to wallow in their spread of ignorance, because it makes for much more sensational journalism.

Will we discover the motivation for the shootings? As suggested by his last name, Muhammad, the sniper, was a convert to Islam. This of course gives rise to the question of whether or not his faith and 9/11 had anything to do with his murderous rampage. Was it simply terrorism, no different from the WTC except on scale? I doubt he had any contact with organized terrorism, any more than the shooter in LAX from a few months back did.

Angry accusations have been hurled at the NRA for their "silence" during the entire sniper murder spree. As if any of those accusers would be satisfied with any official statement the NRA were to make. If the NRA were to condemn the attacks (which of course they do) and publicize their desire for a speedy arrest and prosecution? The accusers would simply ratchet up their rhetoric that NRA executive must be held personally responsible for every gun crime committed in the United States (and probably a few in Mexico too). Do they also believe that the ACLU should be held responsible for crimes committed by people on parole or those who have been released on a technicality? I kinda doubt it, even though both organizations are simply trying to defend the rights of American citizens.

John Allen Muhammad is an ex-soldier and Gulf War veteran. He scored "expert" in the Army's M-16 qualification course. Sorry, Jack Thompson, your ridiculous assertion that the sniper gained his terrific abilities from video games has finally been put to rest. As I covered earlier, the entire suggestion was nonsense to begin with, though I doubt that it will be the last time simpleton lawyer Jack Thompson argues the position.

Sarah Brady has used the sniper shooting to try to advance several points of her group's anti-gun agenda. Even though the weapon used doesn't appear to fall under the legal definition of "assault weapon", she has argued that this attack demonstrates the need to renew the assault weapon ban that expires next year. Of course, even the briefest thought given to that argument shows how utterly hollow it is. The law is still in effect... and did not stop these shootings. How exactly is it important that we extend it? The law does not even cover the weapon used. In other words, it's not even relevant to the situation. And finally, each attack consisted of a single solitary shot. In other words, the crimes would have been no different if the sniper had used a bolt-action 5-shot .223 rifle, or a lever-action 6-shot .223 rifle, or even a single-shot falling-block .223 rifle that contained no magazine at all. Sarah Brady wants to convince us all that banning the rifle used would have prevented these depraved attacks, an argument, it's quite plain, is intellectually bankrupt.

Ballistic fingerprinting is now being thrown around as the solution to all the nation's woes, especially by people who don't understand it. It may surprise some to learn that a few years ago, I also endorsed the idea of a distributed database of ballistic information. I didn't advocate a centralized government database of records, but rather information kept by each manufacturer. It wasn't until the actual process of ballistic fingerprinting was explained to me that I realized why the entire concept was flawed and could never work. Rather than go into a bunch of details here, I'll link to an article by Dave Kopel & Paul H. Blackman who explain it far better than i ever could.