Mia Tretta, center, is seen pointing at a camera as gun legislation advocates gather on the steps of the rotunda in the Rhode Island State House on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Mia Tretta cared more about her Spanish grade and who was going to ask her to the school dance than advocacy as a 15-year-old growing up in California. That changed on Nov. 14, 2019.
“An older student I had never met before entered my school with a gun in his backpack,” the Brown University sophomore told dozens of people gathered Tuesday afternoon in the State Room of the Rhode Island State House.
That was the day Tretta was airlifted to a hospital where doctors removed a bullet from her stomach. She was one of six students shot with a Colt 1911, which the perpetrator had assembled at home. The shooting lasted 16 seconds, killing two students and injuring three others before the perpetrator shot himself in the head.
Tretta was surprised to learn Rhode Island did not have a ban on semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the school shooting in which she was injured. Now a student leader for Brown University Students Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety, she joined Gov. Dan McKee, Rhode Island’s general officers, a slate of lawmakers and a crowd of gun legislation advocates — many wearing orange and red shirts — for a press conference ahead of legislation that seeks to ban what the state calls assault weapons.
“I think this is the year it’ll happen,” McKee said of a potential ban on a variety of semi-automatic shotguns, rifles and pistols.
This year, the governor has posed the weapons ban as a budget issue, and included it in his proposed budget for fiscal 2026 as an article. This year’s maneuver builds on McKee’s previous, successful pushes for gun legislation, like raising the firearm purchasing age from 18 to 21, capping magazine capacity at 10 rounds and forbidding open carry of any rifle or shotgun.
“Today, we talk about another step, that we do everything we can to protect everyone that’s in the state, but in particular our young people in the state who can’t really defend themselves,” McKee said.
The proposed, new ban would apply to the sale, creation, purchase, transfer or ownership of weapons which fall under its provisions, and there would be criminal penalties for people convicted of violating the ban. Gun owners who already possess weapons singled out by the legislation would be able to keep their guns, with some additional registration stipulations put into place upon passage of the act. The act, if successful, would be effective upon passage by the Rhode Island General Assembly.
This year’s legislation is modeled after last year’s bills. Sen. Lou DiPalma, a Middletown Democrat, will bring the bill to the Senate, while Rep. Jason Knight, a Barrington Democrat, will submit it in the House of Representatives.
“Of the 38 senators, I have 24 signatures on the bill,” DiPalma told the crowd. He introduced his bill in the Senate Tuesday, and it will be available online once it’s assigned to a committee for a hearing, Senate spokesperson Greg Paré said in a text Tuesday night.
So far, that does not include Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, DiPalma said. Ruggerio has traditionally been an opponent to stricter gun control legislation, but he expressed a greater willingness to work with the legislation back in a December interview. Both Knight and DiPalma’s bills would need to pass both the House and the Senate. The governor’s budget article, meanwhile, would need to be passed as part of the fiscal 2026 budget, which is typically finalized in early June, primarily by the House.
Ruggerio “will be reviewing the language” of DiPalma’s bill, Paré said via text.
Defining the term “assault weapon” varies depending on the jurisdiction. The 1994 federal ban defined assault weapons as semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns with detachable magazines and certain other features. Nineteen specific gun models, as well as any copycat designs, were banned.
The federal prohibition expired in 2004, leaving it up to states to create statutes that limit semi-automatic firearms. There are 10 states that have bans on such firearms.
Secretary of State Gregg Amore, a former state representative who was sworn in a month after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, said his first bill was a weapons ban.
“It has been frustrating over the course of the years, and I acknowledge the great progress we have made, but this is a legislative process. You can’t executive order it. That’s unconstitutional,” Amore said to loud applause from the crowd.
The state’s firearm market could also recoil at the proposed legislation, according to Glenn Valentine, president of the Rhode Island Second Amendment PAC. Gun owners might panic buy in hopes of grandfathering in their weapons before the law’s possible passage.
“99% of the people that vote for that bill in the General Assembly will just vote for it solely on the political, on the popularity among progressives,” Valentine said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Most of them haven’t read it…They’re going based solely on the description of the bill, they see ‘assault weapon,’ they don’t understand, nor do they care what the gun actually does.”
One example Valentine offered of recent gun legislation’s lack of mechanical understanding involves shotgun shells. Last year’s assault weapons ban bill would have forbidden shotguns that can hold more than six rounds. But not all shells are made in the same size, so even lower-capacity shotguns might be considered illegal under the proposed law.
Valentine said confusion among sellers and buyers alike could result from a ban with overly broad language affecting a large swath of guns in the state.
“You’ve got all of these different types of guns now that will be illegal, which makes up most of the guns that people own in this state,” he said. “People will be pinched on these bills that just don’t know the law.”
The language in DiPalma’s bill from last year, which influenced McKee’s proposed budget article for fiscal 2026, would have defined and banned the following kinds of firearms, according to the bill text:
- “A semi-automatic shotgun with a fixed magazine capacity exceeding six (6) rounds or that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine, and has either a pistol grip, or a folding or telescopic stock.”
- “A semi-automatic rifle with a fixed magazine capacity exceeding 10 rounds or that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least one of the following features: A folding or telescoping stock, a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon, a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor or a grenade launcher.”
- “A semi-automatic pistol that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least one of the following features: The capacity to accept an ammunition magazine at a location outside of the pistol grip, a threaded barrel capable of accepting a barrel extender, flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer; a shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel and that 12 permits the shooter to hold the firearm with the non-trigger hand without being burned but excluding a slide that encloses the barrel, or a manufactured weight of fifty ounces or more when the pistol is unloaded.”
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