The Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 (AWB 2013) was a bill introduced in the 113th United States Congress as S. 150 by Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, on January 24, 2013, one month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Efforts to create a new federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB 1994) were renewed on December 14, 2012, when 20 children and six adults were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

[4] Within hours of the shooting, a We the People user started a petition asking the White House to "immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress."

That afternoon, President Barack Obama made a televised statement offering condolences on behalf of the nation to Connecticut governor, Dannel Malloy and saying, "we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

[8] On December 21, 2012, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA), expressed the gun-rights group's sympathy for the families of Newtown.

[10] There, Feinstein said that the bill was a work in progress and that one idea was to register grandfathered assault weapons under the National Firearms Act (NFA) and another was a buy-back program.

[11] A December 26, two-page bill summary on the senator's web site also mentioned registering grandfathered assault weapons under the NFA, but not a buy-back program.

[31] On the morning of April 17, 2013, Feinstein displayed on the Senate floor a blow-up of a New York Daily News front page with photos of the 20 dead Sandy Hook Elementary School children and the headline, "Shame on U.S."[32][33] Before the vote, she said to her colleagues, "Show some guts."