I don't think democrats actually want to ban guns because they keep obfuscating the issue with the "assault rifle" thing. They're trying to make people believe that it's possible to buy an automatic military-grade rifle. But it's not, what they call assault rifles are semi-automatic rifles with an "assault" appearance, yet the hardware is the same as a hunting rifle. Yet they never talk about banning all rifles. And handguns, who are also semi-automatic, are only marginally less deadly than rifles. Basically they want to give the appearance that they want to do something significant to reduce gun violence, without actually doing anything. They seem to control the media pretty well because the conversation always revolves around this moot point, every shooting.