BOSTON (AP) — Maine Sen. Angus King says he's reluctant to endorse a federal ban on the kind of assault weapon used in last month's Connecticut school shooting.
The newly-elected senator, an independent, told the Associated Press on Thursday that he supports universal background checks and limits on high-capacity ammunition clips as proposed this week by President Barack Obama. But King says he hasn't decided whether to embrace a ban on new assault weapons.
He says most of his friends in Maine who hunt use semi-automatic hunting rifles. And he's not sure if the assault weapons ban would apply to them.
King says he thinks the most important aspects of the president's proposal is the "expansion of background checks, which I believe is appropriate, and the limitation on the size of magazines."
