Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, a very bad man used an AKS to shoot and kill some children at a schoolyard in Stockton, California.

"We must do something!" the public cried. "The AKS is evil! It looks like an AK-47!"

So in 1989, Lawmakers Mr. Roberti and Mr. Roos set out to "do something." They sought to ban the evil-looking AKS.

"But we should ban all the evil guns, not just the AKS," Mr. Roberti said.

"Yes, if we ban all the evil guns, there shall never be another tragedy like Stockton," Mr. Roos said.

So they looked at pictures of evil guns in Shotgun News to see what they should ban.

"Here’s an H&K 91," said Mr. Roberti.

"Yes, it looks evil. We should ban it," said Mr. Roos.

"Here’s a Bushmaster Assault Rifle," said Mr. Roberti.

"Yes, another evil gun. We should ban it too," said Mr. Roos.

"Oh, and look at this Colt AR-15," said Mr. Roberti. "It looks evil. We should ban it."

"Added to the list," said Mr. Roos, writing down the names of the evil guns.

And so Mr. Roberti and Mr. Roos compiled a long list of evil guns. When they had finished, there were over fifty named evil guns on their ban list. Under much public pressure, the evil gun ban passed and the governor signed it into law.

When gunmakers saw the new law, they lamented the lucrative loss of sales of their guns to Californians. But they had an idea. Hartford Horsey renamed the Colt AR-15 to the Colt Sporter.

"The Colt Sporter is not banned in California," said Mr. Horsey, "so we shall sell it there."

Soon, other gunmakers followed suit. They renamed their guns so they would not be banned in California.

When lawmakers saw the newly named evil guns being sold in California, they cried, "LOOPHOLE! LOOPHOLE!"

"It’s not a loophole," said the gunmakers. "YOU wrote the law, WE didn’t."

Soon other states passed their own evil gun bans, New Jersey, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maryland, and then in 1994, federal lawmakers in Washington, DC passed a federal evil gun ban.

But the federal lawmakers had learned their lesson from the California loophole. They passed an evil gun ban based on what they looked like, not by what name they were called.

California lawmakers had learned their lesson too. They sought to strengthen their poorly written law, and so they modeled new evil gun bans after the federal ban. They sent two different versions of the new evil gun ban to the governor to sign, but Mr. Pete Wilson vetoed them both.

Then in 1998, Gray Davis became the governor of California. He promised to sign the new evil gun ban.

And so in 1999, California lawmakers fixed the so-called loophole and banned the evil guns by what they looked like, not by what name they were called.

"If only we had done that ten years ago," said Mr. Roberti.

"Yes," said Mr. Roos. "The gun people are very smart. But now we have outsmarted them. It doesn’t matter what name the guns are called. If they look evil, they should be banned."

And so the moral of the story is: A rose by any other name is still a rose.