Sen. Daniel Akaka was listed in a Salon article among Democrats who have stayed quiet about gun control in the wake of the Colorado theater shooting last week. 

But a spokesman for Akaka says the senator “has always been a strong supporter of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban,” and he supports reinstating it today.

Akaka voted for the ban in 1993, and again in 2004 — but it expired that year. Sen. Daniel Inouye also favors a ban, likening assault weapons to the kind he carried as a soldier during World War II. 

“If somebody carries an assault rifle,” Inouye wrote in a statement. “they are not going duck hunting; they are going manhunting.”

— Adrienne LaFrance