“That being said, I fail to see what a ban on assault weapons will accomplish...”
1. It undermines a major purpose of the 2nd amendment by reducing the most militarily effective arms owned by significant numbers of Americans.
2. It legitimizes the idea that the 2nd amendment is meaningless and can be violated with impunity by the federal goverment.
3. It helps to “freeze” the military technology available to the ordinary man, thus setting the stage for eventual obsolescence through technological advance.
4. It limits the choices in self defense and makes self defense against multiple attackers more difficult.
Attacking the legitimacy of self defense is a major strategy of the anti-freedom forces.
There, now I hope that you see some of the things the proposed legislation would accomplish.
I can see all of these things. I have no doubt that the "elite" in this country would prefer assault weapons be banned for all of the reasons that you point out. These recent shootings are only a means to try and sell such a ban to the general public --many of whom would gladly support it.
I don't see it as being in the cards though. Politicians learned a painful lesson the first time they enacted this ban. They are not likely to repeat it.