"The powerful lobby last week surprised many gun control advocates by embracing possible restrictions on the bump stock devices ... But on Sunday, the NRA drew a line on an outright ban."

Of course the NRA did.

And the punctilious self-appointed gun-terminology experts claim that if all technicalities aren't described exactly right and to their liking, any pleas for some kind of controls, however modest, are null and void.

Let's keep it simple for the NRA and the self-appointed "experts."  Let's severely limit future sales of ALL semiautomatic weapons, pistols and long guns, primarily to the military and law-enforcement agencies.

And another good move would be to similarly limit sales of ANY weapons with removable magazines.  That would exempt revolvers, highly effective for self defense, and such long guns as ones like Model 1894 and Model 70 Winchesters, both highly effective hunting rifles, but time consuming to reload, and thus hard to use to kill masses of people.