One day after the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, this Virginia firing range is packed.

Firearms instructor Mark Briley has a schedule of students. He said the tragedy in Aurora shouldn't change who can own one.

"It makes no sense to penalize people for doing the right thing because a person does the wrong thing."

There are very few politicians willing to publicly battle to ban certain weapons.

"The bottom line is if we had fewer guns, we would have a lot fewer murders," said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In an interview on Face the Nation  Sunday, he blamed both President Obama and Mitt Romney for failing to do enough.

"It's time for both of them to be held accountable," said Bloomberg.

You know, we spend all our time talking about tax returns, and gaffes, and things like that. This is one of those issues, along with a handful of others, that really matter to the American public. It matters to the future of our country, it matters to you and me and to our children and grandchildren.

"And it's time I think that we hold them accountable and say, 'Okay, you want our votes? What are you going to do?'"

VIDEO: See Bloomberg on Face The Nation

Yet popular fear of new laws has helped to pump up gun sales. Ruger and Smith & Wesson are backlogged with orders.

In the last three months, sales at Smith & Wesson are up 28 percent. Alleged shooter James Holmes also used one of their assault rifles to carry out the massacre. And applications for FBI background checks to buy guns are climbing.

While new laws aren't likely, first-time gun owner Annie Fowler said police should work harder to enforce existing laws for gun buyers.

"I think they're have been some laxes in how it's been done and I think it's important that it really be done -- a little bit of rigor," she said.

Even if new laws are enacted, it is unlikely that they would be able to separate gun owners from the nearly 300 million firearms already in U.S. households.

"You know, should we reinstate the assault weapons ban? I think we should, and I think that's where it starts," Perlmutter said on "Face the Nation."

"We ought to be taking a look at how this guy was able to accumulate so much ammunition. He had enough ammunition for, like, a small army. There's something wrong about that."

In a previous segment on "Face the Nation," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said President Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney should define their positions on the assault weapon ban, but Perlmutter said the mayor's focus is misplaced.

"I think he's putting his finger on the wrong spot. This is a Congressional issue," Perlmutter said, promising to keep the issue in the spotlight in Congress.

"I don't think we can avoid it. Carolyn McCarthy from New York, you know, has been a big advocate in this arena, and I'm going to be with her," he said.

Blood on hands of Obama, Mitt and NRA!

Standing at Holmes’ side as he unleashed an AR-15 assault rifle and a shotgun and a handgun was Wayne LaPierre, political enforcer of the National Rifle Association.

Standing at Holmes’ side as he sprayed bullets and buckshot into a crowded movie theater were Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, a President and a would-be President, who have bowed to the NRA’s dictates and who responded to the slaughter Friday with revolting, useless treacle.

In a vain claim of innocence, the fanatics will say Holmes is a monster and a maniac, that he fired and fired and fired as a man possessed. Each protestation clamps their fingers with his around the trigger.

Because they made sure that virtually everyone, Holmes included, has unfettered legal access to heavy weaponry. And they made sure he was permitted by law to drive to the kill scene with a fully loaded arsenal.

Yes, they do. Massacres come and they go and nothing meaningful changes except that the body count goes up.

The big attacks leap to mind.

There was Columbine — amazingly, just down the road from Aurora — where two severely disaffected high school students gunned down 13.

There was Virginia Tech, where a student who had been diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder murdered 32 and wounded 17 on two rampages.  

Lower death tolls — two, three, four, five — in offices, parks and restaurants slip from memory as  awful but routine, cause for momentary pain and nothing more.

The day-to-day mayhem of street-crime shootings, responsible for more deaths than all the mass carnage combined, makes it to the police blotter, the courts, the newspapers, the emergency rooms and the cemeteries.

Every Aurora-like spasm provokes the question: How did the killer get his guns? Overwhelmingly, the answer is that he acquired them legally from a licensed dealer under the permissive laws of the local jurisdiction and the deliberately porous oversight of the federal government.
 

In Aurora, the authorities say someone lawfully bought the weapons used by Holmes and that he carried them lawfully until the moment he pulled a trigger. Even the purchase of the AR-15, a rapid-fire, military-style semi-automatic fit for nothing but combat, was by the books.

Once, federal law would have kept Holmes’ hands off a superdeadly weapon like the AR-15. In 1994, under President Bill Clinton, Congress outlawed the manufacture and possession of assault weapons, but the statute had a 10-year expiration date.

IN 2004, it went off the books to cheers from the NRA, led by LaPierre, who keeps Washington in line and who went to ground Friday, declining comment “until all the facts are known.” As if they aren’t already.

Obama postures as supporting a new assault weapons ban but has done exactly nothing to restore the prohibition. Nor has he moved to close the loophole that allows for gun purchases without background checks at weapons shows.

With all due respect, the presidential takeaway should have been a drive for strengthened gun control, if only for the assault weapons ban. In righteous anger, Obama should have confronted the NRA’s political might regardless of polls that show a strong sentiment against restoring the prohibition.

So, too, Romney, who was no less saccharine than Obama in discussing Aurora and is no less craven on gun control. As governor of Massachusetts, he signed a state assault weapons ban and defended tough anti-gun statutes. Then, as a presidential candidate, he joined the NRA and has since professed fealty to the group’s positions.

Through their inaction and their silence, Obama and Romney have fallen into line with all those who enabled Holmes to take hold of that AR-15 and will enable others to do so in the future unless America’s political leaders develop the courage to fight to save lives.