A... good article about Mass Killers fom Cracked.

This was surprising....

The Baffling Stories Behind Our Epidemic Of Mass Killers

One the one hand the article repeatedly calls a semi-auto pistol and an AR-style gun (even when it's not an AR) the "standard mass shooter gear."  And it notes how common Glock handguns are... in these killings... but that's like saying drunk drivers prefer Ford F150's and Honda civics.

A common gun would tend to be...  common


On the other hand the article admits time and time again, that these killings have been done without "assault weapons" (or even guns),  that the background check laws in the above examples wouldn't have done anything because the killers had clean backgrounds, and makes a point that unless you want to  "ban[] all guns and magically mak[e] the existing 300 million of them vanish" that the laws wouldn't do anything.

The Article has #2 as the Nice massacre, and points out that all the killing was done with a truck, and then mentions at the end the dozens stabbed to death in a mass killing in Japan.


And then there's this:

OK, I have to pause to address everyone who's been shouting, "assault weapons ban!" at their screen for the last 4,000 words. After all, should that crazy fucker have been able to buy these?

But remember, all we're talking about with an assault weapons ban is a limit on how many bullets they hold at a time before you have to reload. Would this particular shooting have turned out differently if he'd only been able to fire, say, ten shots before swapping magazines? Remember, he had combat training -- with practice, swapping magazines can be done in a couple of seconds.

And an AWB doesn't even cover *that*.  What he's talking about is a magazine ban.
An AWB bans guns if they have a certain number of cosmetic features.