Hillary Clinton slammed “shameless” Republicans as “gun worshipers” over their opposition to some gun control legislation.
“You know, democracy is the balancing of interests and rights, and unfortunately at this time, the gun worshipers have a huge advantage because of the filibuster and because of their shameless exploitation of people’s unwarranted fears,” Clinton said on a podcast hosted by Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director of her failed 2016 campaign for the White House.
We talk so much about the right to bear arms in America. @HillaryClinton wants to change the narrative.
What about the rights of everyone else? The right to go to work, to school, or to the grocery store without fear?
Clinton gets candid on #JSAH with @jmpalmieri this Thursday: pic.twitter.com/MFCJyj3KIC
— The Recount (@therecount) March 30, 2021
Clinton also bashed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and “his ilk,” arguing that Republicans were using heated rhetoric to scare people away from enacting stringent gun control measures.
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“The opportunists on the other side, like Cruz and his ilk, they know better, and they are in the position of trying to keep people really riled up and scared that sensible gun legislation like we had in the ‘90s for 10 years will somehow undermine their rights,” she told Palmieri. “Well, what about the rights of all the rest of us? The rights of us to go to work, go shopping, go on dates to the movie theater, go to school, for heaven’s sake — what about the rest of us?”
In the wake of March’s mass shootings, Cruz announced he will reintroduce legislation he first proposed in 2013 with Sen. Chuck Grassley. The legislation would criminalize straw purchases, allow firearms dealers to access the National Crime Information Center’s stolen-gun database to “ensure that a firearm is not stolen prior to acquisition,” and improve the system the FBI uses to conduct background checks on gun dealers.
A spokesman for Cruz responded to Clinton’s comments Wednesday, telling the Washington Examiner that Democrats “want to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans. It’s unfortunate they would rather pander to their liberal base than pass bipartisan legislation like Grassley-Cruz and actually help reduce mass shootings in our country.”
The House of Representatives recently passed two gun control measures that would expand background checks, make it illegal to transfer a gun without a background check performed by a licensed firearms dealer, and give authorities 10 business days to complete a federal background check.
Clinton has been a longtime supporter of strict gun control. She supported the 1994 ban on assault weapons, which was passed while her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was in office.
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In 2008, when she was campaigning against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton advocated against federal “blanket rules” for guns, saying it “doesn’t make sense” to have the same rules for New York City and Montana.
During the 2016 campaign cycle, Clinton called for another assault weapons ban and the expansion of the time limit authorities have to conduct a background check.
