December 18, 2012

Obama to support ban on assault weapon sales Get short URL email story to a friend print version  TAGS: Arms, Law, USA U.S. President Barack Obama (Reuters/Larry Downing) US President Barack Obama supports a proposal from Senator Diane Feinstein (D-California) that would reinstate a ban on the sale of assault weapons in the United States. Sen. Feinstein announced on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend that she helped craft new legislation that was aimed at once again eliminating high-powered firearms from gun stores in the States. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Pres. Obama will support the act. "He is actively supportive of, for example, Sen. Feinstein’s stated intent to revive a piece of legislation that would reinstate the assault weapons ban," Carney told reporters during his daily briefing from the White House on Tuesday, according to POLITICO. Feinstein, who currently chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, championed an earlier ban passed by Congress in 1994, but that bill expired only a decade later. On Sunday, the senator said new legislation in the works would perfect that earlier bill. "It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation, and the possession. Not retroactively, but prospectively. It will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets," she told NBC. "There will be a bill." “We exempt over 900 specific weapons that will not fall under the bill, but the purpose of this bill is to get … 'weapons of war' off the street of our cities," she said. On Tuesday, Carney said the president "supports and would support legislation that addresses the problem of the so-called gun show loophole, and there are other elements of gun legislation that he could support … high capacity ammunition clips, for example. That is certainly something he would be interested in looking at.” Discussions of gun laws have reemerged in recent days following the wake of a mass murder at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut last week. It was there that 20-year-old Adam Lanza used an arsenal of legally obtained firearms to shoot and kill 26 people, including 20 young children. Also on Tuesday, sources in Washington report that Sen. Feinstein is allegedly slated to step down from her role on the Senate Intelligence Committee and will transfer for a role within the Judiciary Committee.

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