The Democrats' plan to ban assault weapons: Does it stand a chance?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, her Democratic colleagues, and a group of mayors and police officers want to beat the odds, and the NRA

Sen. Dianne Feinstein speaks in front of a display of assault weapons during a news conference on Jan. 24.
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

On Thursday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) unveiled her new assault-weapons-ban legislation, flanked by several House and Senate colleagues, victims of gun violence, supportive clergy and uniformed police organizations, and models of semiautomatic weapons used in December's Sandy Hook Elementary School killings and several other mass shootings. Feinstein, one of the sponsors of the expired 1994 assault-weapons ban, says her new bill would be more effective because it would specifically ban more weapons (157 named models, plus slightly broadening the criteria for what constitutes an assault weapon), it would make a background check mandatory for trading or selling existing assault weapons, it would mandate that gun owners keep their weapons locked up securely, and, most importantly, the bill wouldn't expire after a decade. "No weapon is taken from anyone," she said, but an open-ended law is needed to "dry up the supply of these weapons over time." Of course, it has to pass first.

Even with the horror of Sandy Hook on lawmakers' minds, "this is really an uphill road," Feinstein acknowledged. Gun-control advocates have been unable to get Congress to take up renewing the original assault-weapons ban since it expired in 2004. Feinstein and her colleagues, TIME's Katy Steinmetz says, "made arguments about why this time could be different, while acknowledging that there's a good chance it won't be."

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.