Feinstein seeks semiautomatic ban
On March 12, a judge in Colorado blocked the city of Boulder from enforcing its ban on semiautomatic rifles — the type of firearm police say was used to kill 10 people at a Boulder supermarket 10 days later.
Many types of the weapons, which reload with each pull of the trigger, cannot be sold legally in California. There are also laws against them in six other states, but not in Colorado. On Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the massacre showed the need for Congress to revive a nationwide ban on semiautomatics that she sponsored in 1994.
“Sadly, I’ve watched as assault weapons have become the weapon of choice in mass shootings,” the California Democrat said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, citing the slaughters of 58 people at a Las Vegas nightclub in 2017, 14 at a regional disability center in San Bernardino in 2015, and 26, including 20 children, at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.
“If you give people the ability to easily purchase a weapon that can be devastating to large numbers of people, some of them will use that under stress or for whatever reason,” Feinstein said. She said the ban she carried through Congress in 1994 had reduced mass killings by 37% during the 10 years it was in effect.
But even after two mass killings in a week — the Boulder shootings and the March 16 slayings of eight people, six of them Asian-American women, at three Atlantaarea massage parlors — there appears to be little prospect of renewed federal guncontrol legislation.
Feinstein’s nationwide ban on semiautomatic weapons passed the Senate on a 5248 vote and expired in 2004, when Congress refused to renew it. She sponsored a similar measure in 2013 but it was defeated in a 6040 vote.
A more modest measure this year would require background checks for all purchasers of firearms, a requirement that now applies only to sales by licensed gun dealers and not to gun shows or private sales. The measure, similar to laws in California, Colorado and 11 other states, passed the House this month, with support from eight Republicans, but it faces long odds in the Senate.
According to media reports, Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., a selfdescribed member of a “gun culture,” said Tuesday he opposed mandatory background checks on private gun sales. Manchin has also opposed a repeal of filibuster rules that require 60 votes in the 100member Senate to consider most types of legislation, including the gun measures.
At Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing on the background check legislation, Sen. Alex Padilla, DCalif., observed that in most states, “new voters are able to obtain a rifle quicker than they’re able to cast their first ballot.” He said the accused Atlanta slayer had bought his handgun from a dealer earlier the same day, with no waiting period under Georgia law — in contrast to the 10day waiting period required in California, which has some of the nation’s strictest gun laws.
But Sen. Ted Cruz, RTexas, said the background checks “would do nothing to stop these murders.”
Boulder passed its ban on semiautomatic weapons in 2018 in response to the killings of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla. In his March 12 ruling, Boulder County Judge Andrew Hartman said Colorado law prohibits local governments from enacting their own guncontrol measures. City officials, who contend Boulder is a selfgoverning entity exempt from the state restrictions, could appeal the ruling.
Feinstein’s proposal to renew the federal ban on such weapons was derided Tuesday by Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association.
The previous ban “did nothing ... to prevent tragedies like this,” Michel said, disputing Feinstein’s assessment. “Additional bans and restrictions on lawabiding gun owners only make it more difficult for them to choose how best to protect themselves and their families.”