Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) said "we're not talking about a ban on all semiautomatic weapons" on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday morning.
The question came in response to a CNN town hall Wednesday where the audience cheered a hypothetical ban on all semiautomatic weapons, an idea that Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) meant to highlight as outside the mainstream.
Banning all semi-auto weapons may have been popular with the audience at #CNNTownHall, but it is a position well outside the mainstream https://t.co/18rMDwEfGs
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 22, 2018
"I know that there is this differentiation that gun control supporters believe in," Tapper said. "There's assault weapons and then there's all the other semiautomatic weapons, but Rubio's point—and it's not incorrect—is that just a few changes, and one is legal and one is not legal. Do you support a ban on all semiautomatic weapons?" Tapper asked.
"I support a ban on assault weapons and assault weapons are defined by state law. Not as all semiautomatic weapons," Murphy said.
The Connecticut senator then said that assault weapons look like automatic weapons even though they're semiautomatic and have bullets that exit guns three times faster than handguns.
"As doctors have described, post Parkland, they do something to your insides that a bullet coming out of a revolver doesn't," he said.
Murphy finished by saying "I don't think we're talking about a ban on all semiautomatic weapons. I think we're talking about very tightly defined assault weapons that make the semiautomatic weapons turn into weapons of mass destruction."
Murphy's distinction is noteworthy, as he is one of the most vocal gun control supporters in the Senate.
His appearance follows a trend of other Democratic lawmakers saying they don't support a ban on all semiautomatic weapons, including Rep. Dan Kildee (Mich.) and Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.).