Interim U.S. Sen. Mo Cowan visited two small businesses in Boston today – a bakery and a technology refurbishing plant. He met privately with the owners to talk about threats to small businesses posed by recent, across-the-board federal spending cuts.

Afterward, he talked to reporters, and commented on the approval of a bill to reinstate an assault weapons ban.

"I'm fully supportive of what Senator Feinstein is trying to do,” Cowan said. “I have signed on as cosponsor of a number of gun safety bills since I've been in Washington D.C. Listen, I believe in the Second Amendment, I know what it says, I'm a lawyer. But the Second Amendment does not say one should be able to possess any high capacity rifle or magazine for any particular purpose."

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill yesterday. It was the first major congressional test of the issue since the law expired in 2004. But the ban still awaits a senate vote, likely sometime next month.

Cowan told WGBH News that he is following the Senate race that will ultimately replace him – but as a voter, not a campaigning politician – and also the storm cleanup efforts along the coast.

He said the Small Business Administration has been talking about the government's role in aiding coastal businesses after the winter storms.

"Should the government in that instance have said, 'Well, you didn't have the right risk, the right insurance?' I don't think so,” he said. “There's a role for government in that circumstance. And because the government, small business administration in particular quite rapidly, a number of those businesses are back online and thriving. So there's certainly a worthwhile conversation around the role of government and the risk and private insurance and all those considerations. But I am not one who subscribes to the theory that there is no role for government in a moment of disaster. I think that if anything is what government ought to do and that is what people pay government to do."

Cowan is a member of the Senate Agriculture, Commerce, and Small Business Committees.