WASHINGTON -- As Sen. Dianne Feinstein stepped to the podium to announce a new bill to close a loophole in an automatic weapons law, you could hardly blame her if she had a case of deja vu.
Referring to Nov. 27, 1978, she said: "I have found, as you all know, somebody shot to death who was a colleague of mine. And the mayor shot to death. I know what guns can do."
The assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk suddenly vaulted Feinstein into the national spotlight and launched a career of fighting for tighter controls on guns.
"Some say now is not the time," Feinstein said at a press conference Wednesday in the nation's capital. "Ladies and gentlemen, when is the time going to be there?" She added that "there's no better way to honor the 59 people slaughtered than to take action to prevent this from happening yet again."
Fully automatic weapons are already banned by the 1934 National Firearms Act. Feinstein's Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act would ban the sale and manufacture of bump-fire stocks and other accessories that can be attached to semi-automatic weapons to make them reach the same rate of fire as fully automatic weapons.