A lot happened in DC during those five years. Two Democrats, Ohio Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum and Arizona Sen. Dennis DeConcini, introduced bills that would ban assault rifles that floundered under pressure from the gun lobby, despite DeConcini having once been named the NRA's "legislator of the month." Speaking of the NRA, the powerful organization was busy elsewhere in Washington strong-arming organizations into halting research into gun violence. They eventually helped pass a bill that stripped the Centers for Disease Control of $2.6 million in funding, a sum that happened to be the exact budget for its firearms research. Somewhat short on research and struggling to win support, the anti-assault rifle senators eventually got the ban passed by tacking it onto a 1993 crime bill, under Feinstein's leadership.

The ban was hardly absolute, many say, thanks in part to the crushing pressure of the gun lobby. For instance, it didn't do anything about the 1.5 million assault rifles that were already on the streets and couldn't control the flow of high-capacity magazines which were legal to import if they were manufactured before the ban. The ban also allowed for plenty of wiggle room within the definition of "assault rifle." As The Times points out, the ban defined an assault rifle "as one able to accept a detachable magazine and that includes at least two other combat-type features." Gun manufacturers started tweaking specifications, like adding a somewhat hard-to-access button to release the clip which mean it was not detachable according to federal law.

We don't know what Feinstein's new law will look like yet, but it's probably safe to say it's been dragged through the trenches just like the 1994 ban was. The trenches will be messy for everybody, too, not just the lawmakers. Take it from Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the U.C. Davis, who's spent much of the past two decades researching gun violence. "There was a time when federal law enforcement agents recommended that I wear a ballistic vest," he told Slate. "There is a wanted poster on the Internet*."

* - The poster is actually a "warning" poster, not a "wanted" poster. However, it should be noted that the warning to "notify security" at a gun show could be seen as a threat.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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