President Donald Trump speaks as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) listen during a meeting on gun control with bipartisan members of the Congress at the White House on February 28, 2018.Alex Wong/Getty Images[1]
- Gun control advocates are calling for a range of measures they say will help prevent future mass shootings like the one that took place at a Florida high school on February 14.
- Chief among their proposals is a ban on assault weapons, including guns like the AR-15, which was used in the Florida shooting.
- But how such a ban would actually work — and which guns would be categorized as an assault weapon — remains unclear.
- A look back at history offers some context as to why.
Students and parents fed up with gun violence in schools across the US have been calling on Congress to enact a range of gun control measures that they say will help prevent future mass shootings. Central to their demands is a ban on assault weapons.
But how such a proposal would actually work — and which types of gun would be included in the ban — isn't entirely clear.
In a televised meeting[2] on gun control with lawmakers at the White House on Tuesday, President Donald Trump shocked Republicans and Democrats when he suggested that a comprehensive bill addressing gun violence should include a ban on assault weapons.
Last year, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017,[3] which would outlaw the "sale manufacture, transfer and importation of 205 military-style assault weapons by name." Feinstein said more than 2,200 other types of gun would remain legal.
Trump's apparent endorsement of aspects of a ban on assault weapons is a stunning reversal for a Republican president. Feinstein even cracked a smile[4] and appeared to be gleeful about the suggestion.
While it puts him at odds with the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun rights lobbying organization[5] that supported Trump's presidential candidacy, it also pits him against fellow Republicans, who have long opposed restrictions on buying firearms.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School memorial stretches for acres. Getty Images/Joe Raedle
During a CNN town-hall event featuring students who survived last month's mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio explained why he didn't think Feinstein's bill would not save lives.
"If I believed that that law would have prevented [the Florida massacre] from happening, I would support it," Sen. Marco Rubio said[6] in response to a question from Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the Florida shooting.
The problem with Feinstein's bill, Rubio added, is that while it would ban more than 200 specific models of guns, thousands of others that are "identical in the way that they function, in how
