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 Clinton spoke out forcefully in favor of new gun control measures
immediately after Thursday's shooting by a lone gunman on the campus
of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, which killed nine
people and wounded another nine.
Sanders, who has been dogged by criticism from gun-control groups
since almost the moment he entered the race, defended his record on
Thursday while speaking in much more measured terms on what kind of
gun control is needed.
At a campaign event in Davie, Florida, on Friday, Clinton vowed to
build a “national movement” to counter the influence of the National
Rifle Association, the nation’s top gun-rights advocacy group.
“What’s wrong with us that we can’t stand up to the NRA and the gun
lobby?” she said.
Clinton touted the assault weapons ban, since expired, that was
enacted during the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton. “We’re
going to take (the gun lobby) on,” she said, echoing the remarks she
made immediately after the Oregon shooting. “We took them on in the
'90s. We’re going to take them on again.”
Gun-control groups praised her aggressive stance.
“Having Hillary say that stuff, it’s incredible,” Ladd Everitt, a
spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told Reuters on
Thursday.
At the same time, Everitt’s group has been blasting Sanders, a U.S.
senator from Vermont, for his support for a 2005 federal law that
shields gun manufacturers, distributors and dealers from civil
liability for mass shootings. (A senator from New York at the time,
Clinton voted against the bill.)
Everitt said Sanders’ position clashes with his image as a
progressive populist. “It’s unsettling. It’s not in concert with his
anti-corporate approach,” he said. “We’re at a moment where we kind
of need to be fearless.”
Residents of Sanders' home state of Vermont largely are protective
of gun rights.
Along with supporting the law providing legal immunity to gun
makers, Sanders, as a member of the House of Representatives, voted
against the so-called Brady Bill in 1993, which imposed mandatory
background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases.
Sanders defended his record on Thursday on MSNBC. “I don’t know that
anybody knows what the magic solution is,” he said.
“You can sit there and say I think we should do this and do that,
but you’ve got a whole lot of states in this country where people
want virtually no gun control at all. And if we are going to have
some success we are going to have to start talking to each other.”
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Everitt was unimpressed. “He has the body language of a man who
doesn’t like talking about this,” he said.
In contrast to Sanders, Clinton spent much of the summer, in the
wake of mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, Roanoke,
Virginia, and elsewhere, advocating new measures to quell gun
violence and actively speaking of curbing the power of the NRA,
which repeatedly has worked to defeat new gun-control initiatives in
Congress.
Clinton, however, while still the front-runner in the Democratic
race, has seen Sanders, a self-described Socialist, siphon away
support from progressives within the party.
But her supporters say that with new attention given the spate of
gun violence in America, Clinton may have found a way to blunt
Sanders’ edge. “In light of Senator Sanders’ record when it comes to
guns, I think it’s a legitimate issue, a difference that Senator
Clinton can and should raise,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic
strategist and former top Senate aide.
Sanders’ campaign said critics are not appreciating the candidate's
full record on gun control. “The senator supports sensible
gun-control legislation," said campaign spokesman Michael Briggs,
noting that Sanders supported Senate efforts after the 2012
shootings at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut to ban
assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Sanders, like Clinton, also backs eliminating the “gun show
loophole” that exempts purchasers in private gun sales from
background checks.
And unlike Sanders, Clinton has not explicitly called for a new ban
on assault weapons, an incendiary issue among gun owners, even as
she has praised the one passed during the 1990s. Her campaign
declined to clarify her position.
(Reporting by James Oliphant and Amanda Becker; Writing by James
Oliphant; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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