Would it work? Likely.
Though some experts doubt the results of assault weapon bans, many see it as an appropriate first step to keeping the highly lethal weapons beyond reach for good and bad actors alike.
The last federal ban on assault weapons was passed by Congress in 1994 to combat mass shootings, which fell significantly over the 10 years the law was in place.
Though lawmakers didn't specifically define an "assault weapon," they made 18 weapons illegal to manufacture, which did not affect the assault firearms already owned by Americans.
After the law expired, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania expressed in a federally funded report that the ban's overall effect was unimpressive.
"Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement," said the report, which the Department of Justice commissioned.
"Bans on assault weapons can both reduce the mayhem from and perhaps even reduce the frequency of these lethal crimes," Professor John J. Donohue III, a lead researcher on mass shootings at Stanford University said. "We see from diaries of the mass shooters that they see the AR-15 or some such as the vindication of their manhood and power and a vehicle for addressing their perceived grievances."
Fixing the "gun culture that steeps troubled and ineffectual men in this notion of redemption through violence and then makes the most deadly weaponry available to them" would have a direct effect on the rates of mass shootings, Donohue said.