2020 Democratic presidential candidate and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock turned to an emotional story during Tuesday night’s debate, sharing how his 11-year-old nephew was shot dead on a school playground.
“How can Democrats trust you to be the leader in this fight for gun safety when you only changed your position to call for an assault weapons ban last summer?” CNN debate moderator Don Lemon asked.
Bullock began his response by appearing to cite a Pew Research Center study showing that around 40% of Americans have a gun in their household and added that he also owns one. But he quickly hit an emotional tone when noting the 1994 shooting death of his nephew, Jeremy Bullock, on a school playground in Butte, Montana.
“We need to start looking at this as a public health issue, not a political issue,” Bullock said.
Bullock also pivoted to climate change and big pharma in his answer, saying that Washington, D.C., is “captured by dark money, the Koch brothers and others.”
“That’s been the fight of my career,” Bullock said. “Kicking the Koch brothers out of Montana, taking the first case after Citizens United up to the Supreme Court, making it so that elections are about people.”
