Adam Winkler

While much of the media reaction about Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to scrap the assault weapons ban has been predictably shrill and overwrought, to its credit the Daily Beast ran an interesting analysis from a liberal law professor that argued that a) the Feinstein gun ban was easy to get around with all its loopholes b) might not pass muster in federal court given Supreme Court precedent and c) that the focus on a weapons ban had poisoned the well for liberal gun control advocates who might have had more success had they not pursued a gun ban that energized gun rights advocates to rally against it.

In his March 20 piece, UCLA constitutional law professor Adam Winkler -- who, by the way, supported the D.C. handgun ban in an amicus brief in the 2008 Heller case but argued against Chicago in the 2009 McDonald one-- groused that "gun-control advocates deserve a share of the blame for focusing on a symbolic proposal with little prospect of passage" (emphases mine):

In a report at the top of Thursday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Kevin Tibbles fretted that "Despite bylaws that prohibit gun shops within city limits...Chicago appears to be awash in guns." A sentiment that echoed ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer, who on Wednesday announced to viewers that the whole nation was "awash in guns." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

The declaration from Tibbles teed up gun control advocate and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler to claim that the problem with Chicago's gun restrictions was that they were not universal: "Chicago certainly has strict gun control laws. But the difficulty is that outlying areas outside of Chicago and in other states, neighboring Illinois, don't have strict gun control laws, and the guns easily flow into Chicago because of that."