U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said Sunday that she will introduce an assault weapons ban bill on the first day that the new Congress begins this January.
Asked on Meet The Press whether President Barack Obama has failed to lead on the issue of gun control, Feinstein responded:
"Well, I'm not going to comment on that. I can tell you that he is going to have a bill to lead on because as a first day bill I'm going to introduce in the Senate and the same bill will be introduced in the House. A bill to ban assault weapons."
Feinstein's statements come just two days after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where gunman Adam Lanza reportedly used a Bushmaster .223 assault rifle to murder 26 people, including 20 children.
The bill, Feinstein said, would be a version of a 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, a bill she co-authored. Congress allowed that ban to lapse in 2004, and another similar bill has not been introduced since.
"It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession. Not retroactively but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets. So there will be a bill," Feinstein said. "We've been working on it now for a year. We've tried to take my bill from '94 to 2004 and perfect it. We believe we have. We exempt over 900 specific weapons that will not fall under the bill. But the purpose of this bill is to get just what Mayor Bloomberg said, weapons of war, off the streets of our cities."
Watch the video below, courtesy of NBC:
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*This post has been updated to add the video and full text of Feinstein's comments.
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