Two things about banning automatic weapons to prevent such massacres or reducing the numbers killed:
1. "What's now beyond dispute — largely from the [Columbine] killers' journals, which have been released over the past few years, is this: Harris and Klebold killed 13 and wounded 24, but they had hoped to kill thousands.
The pair planned the attacks for more than a year, building
100 bombs and persuading friends to buy them guns. Just after 11 a.m. on April 20, they lugged a pair of duffel bags containing
propane-tank bombs into Columbine's crowded cafeteria and another into the kitchen, then stepped outside and waited.
Had the bombs exploded, they'd have killed virtually everyone eating lunch and brought the school's second-story library down atop the cafeteria, police say. Armed with a pistol, a rifle and two sawed-off shotguns, the pair planned to pick off survivors fleeing the carnage.
As a last terrorist act, a pair of gasoline bombs planted in Harris' Honda and Klebold's BMW had been rigged apparently to kill police, rescue teams, journalists and parents who rushed to the school — long after the pair expected they would be dead.
The pair had parked the cars about 100 yards apart in the student lot. The bombs didn't go off......" (*)
2. The 9-1-1 Massacre was accomplished with bombs consisting of loaded for cross-country jet fuel tanks flown into the buildings.
When sick minds are set on doing a massacre, they will find a way to do it regardless of the legality of the various types of guns.
To me, the common denominator in most of these mass shootings such as Columbine, Ft. Hood, Tuscon, Denver Theater, Virginia Tech and probably this latest massacre in Newtown is that school and military (Ft. Hood and Walter Reed) faculty, justice system authorities and counseling professionals
knew long before the events that these killers were sick enough in the head to be planning and capable of carrying out such an event.
But "privacy" laws and notions, maintaining a good institutional image, and political correctness are helping to keep such individuals and their evil, sick propensities under wraps and they are allowed to be free to stalk and plan and execute.
I suspect the killer in this case, too, was known to have a history of sick and twisted thinking but more and more kids and classmates have been taught to be "tolerant" and "nonjudgmental". Those two good concepts have become distorted to the point of many young people thinking it's worse to be "judgemental" than it is to be planning an evil, murderous and suicidal killing spree.
(*)
10 years later, the real story behind Columbine - USATODAY.com