In the middle of a hot New York summer day, a guy from Las Vegas walked into a Park Avenue office building, murdered a security guard, two other people working there and an NYPD officer, and then turned the gun on himself.

The New York Times just reported that the man bought the gun – an assault weapon – from his boss for $1,400. He then drove to New York with the intent of inflicting some sort of pain on executives of the National Football League.

We can wonder about why he did it. We can ask if he was mentally ill. We can dismiss him as a troubled soul.

What we can’t dismiss is the goddamn assault weapon.

For 10 years, from 1995 to 2005, there was a ban in this country on some semi-automatic firearms as well as on large capacity ammunition magazines. President Bill Clinton signed it into law, with the support of former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. President George W. Bush let the law expire.

Because the law wasn’t in effect long enough, critics say there’s no statistical proof that it cut down on murders.

But it sure seems as though there would have been anecdotal proof on Monday in New York.

And yet, you know and I know and everybody in Congress and everyone in the gun-fetish lobby that’s the National Rifle Association that the end result of this horrible murder will be the status quo. 

No laws will be passed. No regulations enforced. In fact, the bangbangers will argue that New York’s stricter laws on assault weapons are useless, that the only way to prevent this sort of mayhem is to arm everybody to the teeth.

Here’s the thing:

One of those murdered Monday was Officer Didarul Islam of the New York City Police Department. He was working a second job as a security officer at the office building when the gunman sauntered in with his assault rifle.

Islam got world-class training to shoot the handgun he carried. It was no match when someone carrying a war weapon initiated an attack that no one could have possibly expected.

So why don’t police unions and police organizations organize and march and sell bumper stickers demanding that this country regulate the sale of weapons that overpower the men and women trying to protect us?

It always seems as though the people who fight the hardest for sensible gun control are students and parents. Because the most horrific of mass shootings – and they’re all pretty goddamn awful – are those in which children are massacred in their classrooms. Sandy Hook and Uvalde evoke painful memories and terror.

And yet, politicians bought and paid for by the NRA manage to ignore these protests. 

There’s nothing they can do. It’s the Second Amendment. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Thoughts and prayers.

If police advocates went as all out to stop assault weapons as they do to whine about lack of respect, maybe that respect would come more easily.

But I don’t think it’s going to happen. And here’s why:

You get the sense that police officers don’t want bad people to have guns. But they seem to think that everybody they know – kids, parents, siblings, extended family, neighbors – should.

So regulating that would put their faves at odds with the law. And given the choice of possibly getting killed in a shootout with someone having imaginary CTE or arming them and theirs, they’ll take the latter.

Police officers have seen what happens when a gunman takes an AR-15 to elementary school children, And they still can’t manage to stand strong with kids and parents against those weapons.

So forget the BS about how New York is a cesspool of evil, or how it’s our socialist tendencies or lax morals or anything else these yokels from the Republican Party spit out.

Strong gun laws would go a long way toward stopping the madness that took place in New York this week. And police groups can go a long way toward getting those gun laws.

But it ain’t gonna happen.

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