Public support for a nationwide ban on assault weapons has jumped sharply after a gunman used a semiautomatic assault rifle to kill 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

According to a new CBS News poll conducted in the days following the Orlando shooting, 57 percent of Americans now say they support a nationwide ban on assault weapons. That’s up 13 percentage points from the 44 percent support for a ban that the same poll showed in December.

The December poll showed the lowest level of support for an assault weapons ban in at least 20 years of polling. It was conducted in the aftermath of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, in which a man and woman used assault rifles to kill 14 people and wound 21 more.

The shooting in Orlando has reignited public debate over the proper role of military-style weapons in society. Seven out of the eight latest public mass shootings have been committed with an assault rifle, according to a database of these shootings maintained by Mother Jones Magazine. The weapons can hold many rounds of ammunition — typically 30 — and skilled shooters can reload them in a matter of seconds. This makes it possible for a shooter to discharge many rounds of ammunition in a short period of time, killing or wounding dozens of people in a matter of minutes.

On top of this, assault rifles are typically more powerful and more accurate than other types of weapons. The AR-15, the most popular type of assault rifle available to civilians today, is accurate at up to 550 meters. Bullets fired from the gun leave the chamber at a speed of 3,260 feet per second, or a little over 2,000 miles per hour, according to one manufacturer.

By contrast, Glock 9mm pistols, one of the more popular handguns on the market, typically fire bullets with a muzzle velocity between 985 and 1,500 feet per second, or between 670 and 1,000 miles per hour. And handguns are typically far less accurate than assault rifles, with maximum accurate ranges between 50 and 100 meters.

Gun rights groups argue that bans on the weapons wouldn’t work, since there are already millions of them in circulation.

However, hundreds of thousands more assault rifles are manufactured and sold each year. A ban could help prevent a would-be mass shooter from walking into a gun store and walking out the same day with a brand new assault rifle — which is what the Orlando shooter did just a few days before his attack.