HARRY REID: Voting To Save Lives Is 'More Important Than Preventing Imagined Tyranny'

AP

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that he would support a new ban on assault weapons as an amendment to pending gun control legislation.

""I will vote for Dianne Feinstein's assault weapons ban," Reid said in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor.

"I will vote for assault weapons ban because maintaining law and order and saving lives is more important than preventing imagined tyranny."

"Today I choose to vote my conscience, not only as Harry Reid, a United States Senator, but also as a husband, a father, a grandfather, and — I hope — a friend to lots and lots of people," Reid concluded.

Reid's support for a new assault weapons ban marks a final break between the Nevada Democrat and the National Rifle Association, with whom he has previously enjoyed a relatively warm relationship.

Until recently, Reid's campaign website even featured an endorsement from NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre that expressly praised Reid for opposing a new assault weapons ban.

The endorsement was taken down earlier this year, as Democrats began their push for new gun control legislation in the wake of the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn.