Two of Maine's U.S. Senate candidates are debating the need for new gun controls following the shootings that took 12 lives and injured dozens of others in Colorado.

Democrat Cynthia Dill on Saturday called on Congress to renew a ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004.

Dill says one of the weapons seized from the suspect was an AR-15 assault rifle and would have been defined as a "semiautomatic assault weapon", subject to sharp restrictions under the expired Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

Independent tea partier Andrew Ian Dodge says Dill is using the Colorado event as an excuse to ban guns. Dodge says she's using the evil actions of one man to call for limiting the rights of every law abiding citizen.

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