As California’s senior Senator, Dianne Feinstein has built a reputation as an independent voice, working hard to find commonsense solutions to problems facing California and the nation.
Since her election to the Senate in 1992, Senator Feinstein has built a significant record of legislative achievements across a wide range of issues.
Senator Feinstein led a bipartisan group of senators in passing legislation to drastically increase the fuel efficiency of cars. She was a leading voice in the effort to legalize gay marriage and ensure rights for LGBT Americans. She’s a champion for the preservation of the Mojave Desert, Lake Tahoe and California’s forests. She helped create the nationwide AMBER Alert network, passed bills to criminalize border drug tunnels and has long focused on improving California’s water infrastructure and reducing the threat of wildfires. She also continues to advocate for commonsense gun laws.
Senator Feinstein has long advocated for commonsense laws to reduce gun violence. Most notably, she achieved passage of the landmark, federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 and has advocated for its reinstatement since it expired in 2004.
Senator Feinstein in 2019 introduced three pieces of gun safety legislation in the Senate: an updated Assault Weapons Ban, the Extreme Risk Protection Order Act to help states develop court processes that allow family members to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals and a bill to raise the federal age to purchase assault weapons and high-capacity magazines from 18 to 21.
Senator Feinstein is also a strong proponent of universal background checks; a bill to accomplish that was passed in the House in 2019 but not taken up by Senate Republican leaders.