Obama: 'Being tough on terror' means an assault weapons ban


President Obama reiterated his support for a ban on assault weapons in his weekly address to the nation Saturday, arguing it is a necessary piece of the war on terror.
"Being tough on terrorism, particularly the sorts of homegrown terrorism that we've seen now in Orlando and San Bernardino," Obama said, "means making it harder for people who want to kill Americans to get their hands on assault weapons that are capable of killing dozens of innocents as quickly as possible."
Though an "assault weapon" has no legal definition under current federal law, it is generally considered to mean a semiautomatic rifle with certain military features. A 1994 law, which has now expired, specifically banned 19 gun models (and their imitators) that fit this description. Watch the president's full address below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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