By
President Biden looks on after speaking during an event about gun violence prevention in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 8. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
When an assailant stormed a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., last month and fatally shot 10 people, the suspected weapon of choice — a Ruger AR-556 pistol — captured immediate attention. Not for what it technically was — a pistol — but for what it more closely resembled — an assault-style rifle.
The legality and lethality of semi-automatic “assault-style weapons” has been a topic of debate before. But in the wake of the mass shooting in Boulder, calls are once again growing for a federal ban on these guns, including from President Biden. While unveiling a series of new measures around gun violence prevention at the White House on Thursday, the president said the nation should reinstate a version of the federal assault weapons ban he helped to pass as a senator in the 1990s.