politicians generally do two things
pander to those they think support them
try to preserve their tenure in office
in some cases, they pander to a public outcry and yes, Sandy Hook was a one of those
but we often see politicians whip up public hysteria without any visible massacre
like Obama denying private companies the ability to re-import hundreds of thousands of highly collectible MI Garands we had sold or given to our allies and are now militarily obsolete. Obama claimed that "these weapons of war could end up on our streets" even though the US GOVERNMENT through the now privatized (under clinton) Civilian Marksmanship Program sold millions of these rifles and the MI carbines to people like me and the number of them used i crimes-especially the bi and heavy Garands have an almost non-existent incidence of criminal misuse
The part I put in bold is key. Pandering to public outcry. The average person is generally an idiot. Let's just get that out in the open. So they aren't necessarily worried about the
actual results of an action, they are merely interested in whether or not the action provides them the
illusion of achieving their goals.
Many people in the public are of the misguided belief that gun restrictions can prevent gun crimes. Thus, they
want to see restrictions put into place. They don't give a **** about how unlikely it is that an M1 Garand is going to be used in a crime, they don't even know what an M1 Garand
is. They merely want to see "something done", no matter how useless that "something" that gets done is.
Politicians are also idiots, but their advisers are often quite smart. The advisers know that the easiest way to appease the public is to do "something" regardless of how pointless that "something" actually
is. So they pass laws that have no chance of working and it appeases the public that they wish to appease.
On the flip side, the opposition politicians will wave guns around and yammer on incessantly about tyranny and using guns to defend freedom, which counts as "something done" for the idiots in the public to which
they pander. It has an affect on these people despite being an equally worthless gesture as the "ban" imposed by the other douche.
Politics, when boiled down to its base form, is nothing but a game of getting idiots to think you are "doing something". It's merely a matter of picking which
kind of idiot you want to pander to. The left has picked the kind of idiots who want to ban guns, the right has picked the kinds of idiots who love guns. Since both groups tend to have traits which align them with certain other views, it's a little bit more complicated than simply deciding on guns and moving on, but the incredibly strong correlations between supporting gun rights and evangelical Christianity and opposing gun rights while supporting abortion rights are indicative of the general mindset of the idiots involved.
Granted, there's a lot of group think involved that I'm downplaying. Conforming to the local social norms is a big part of why such correlations exist, but blind conformity to any specific set of social norms is often a result of incredible stupidity.