Dianne Feinstein became Mayor of San Francisco as the product of assassination, when San Francisco supervisor Dan White murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall in 1978. When she found Milk’s body she could smell the gunpowder. She tried to find his pulse and instead put her finger in a bullet hole. So she knows from first-hand experience about the violence that only guns can inflict on our fellow Californians.

An issue of personal importance to her, Senator Feinstein authored the landmark assault weapons ban, which banned military-style firearms from 1994 to 2004. Over that decade, the number of gun massacres fell by 37 percent and the number of people dying from gun massacres fell by 43 percent.

Now, since the assault weapons ban expired and after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 that killed 20 first graders and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, more than 400 people have been shot in more than 200 school shootings.

Tragedies in Parkland, Las Vegas, Newtown, Aurora, San Bernardino, and so many more have shocked the nation and demonstrated the need to act. Senator Feinstein has introduced a new Assault Weapons Ban to halt the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of the most commonly-owned military-style assault weapons and ban large-capacity magazines that are specifically designed to inflict maximum casualties.

She will also continue to author and support additional legislation to enact sensible gun laws, including: closing the gun-show loophole, holding arms manufacturers accountable, raising the minimum age to purchase firearms, and preventing those on the terrorist watch list from buying a gun.