Rep. Carolyn McCarthy's bill would ban high-capacity ammo magazines

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) is reintroducing legislation to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines for guns in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre.

"These assault magazines help put the 'mass' in 'mass shooting' and anything we can do to stop their proliferation will save lives in America," McCarthy said Thursday in a statement.

McCarthy has sought to reinstate the ban on those ammunition magazines in each Congress since it expired in 2004, 10 years after it first passed, partly in reaction to the Stockton, Calif., school shooting in 1989.

The High Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act would ban the sale or transfer of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds. Magazines are available today that hold more than 100 rounds.

The measure is the first in a series of gun-control bills that McCarthy intends to introduce this month. They include a reinstatement of an assault weapons ban and tightened background checks on people buying guns, said her spokesman Shams Tarek.The National Rifle Association has opposed any new gun laws in the wake of the killing of 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, calling instead for armed guards to be posted in all schools.

McCarthy, whose husband was murdered and her son critically wounded in the 1993 mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road, is co-sponsoring the ammunition bill with Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.).

This story has been changed to clarify that ammunition magazines would be banned under the proposed bill.