Yes, "Hillary Clinton Really Is Coming For Your Guns," the Daily Beast's Jackie Kucinich reported Monday. "Clinton has been pushing to curb firearms for decades," added the subheadline.
Kucinich laid out the evidence for why Clinton may seriously campaign on more gun restrictions and make a push for the same if she's elected (emphasis mine):
Hillary Clinton has long pushed to regulate access to guns. In her Friday speech, she pledged her presidency would be no different.
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[F]or Clinton, gun control has been a significant part of her political identity. She’s been working to regulate the firearms industry for decades, and had a front row seat the last time a president actually managed to pass any gun-control measure.
In other words: other candidates may say they’re coming for unregulated guns. Clinton really is.
No wonder the NRA has vowed to bring her down.
Her experiences in the ’90s—and the massacre of 13 people at Columbine High School in particular—seemed to shape her views and belief that the laws needed to change to better protect people.
The Clinton administration came into the White House in 1993 with a pledge to sign the Brady Bill, which implemented a five-day waiting period and a background check in order to buy a handgun.
Once Bill Clinton was in the office, he worked with former White House press secretary James Brady and his wife, Sarah, to pass the bill. And it was over the course of that fight Hillary Clinton forged a strong friendship with Sarah.
In her book, Living History, Clinton marveled at the Bradys’ strength.
“The bill wouldn’t have been possible without the tireless efforts of James and Sarah Brady,” she wrote. “He and his indomitable wife, Sarah, had dedicated their lives to keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.”
“Hillary was always really supportive, there was never a time it was in question,” said a longtime friend of Sarah Brady, who asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly about their relationship. “They became incredibly close—close on the issue and close personally.”
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When Clinton announced her candidacy for the Senate in February 2000, she pledged “to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and away from children, for closing the gun-show loophole, requiring child safety locks and licensing all new handgun owners.”
She also co-sponsored several bills aimed at closing the so-called “gun show loophole” and voted to renew the assault weapons ban in 2004. These efforts, however, all came up short, and the Bill Clinton-era assault weapons ban expired.
The gun-control measures were good politics in New York. But by 2008, when Hillary was running for national office, she softened her position a bit.
When asked by NBC’s Tim Russert whether she would implement a plan wherein “everyone who wishes to purchase a gun should have a license, and that every handgun sale or transfer should be registered in a national registry,” during a presidential debate in 2008, Clinton said it was not politically possible.
“Well, I am against illegal guns, and illegal guns are the cause of so much death and injury in our country,” she said. “I also am a political realist and I understand that the political winds are very powerful against doing enough to try to get guns off the street, get them out of the hands of young people.”
In other words, the pivot on gun control was temporary, tiny. She added, “We need to have a registry that really works, with good information about people who are felons, people who have been committed to mental institutions like the man in Virginia Tech who caused so much death and havoc. We need to make sure that that information is in a timely manner, both collected and presented.”
