Hillary Clinton attacked loose gun laws and her Democratic primary opponent on Sunday in her latest call for policies aimed at reducing gun violence.
“Guns are not the answer to anything,” Clinton told a congregation at Grace Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., according to the New York Daily News. “They are the answer to nothing except pain and heartbreak and ruined lives.”
Clinton’s appeal for stronger gun laws plays well in New York, which holds its presidential primary Tuesday. But she has also touted the issue more aggressively than Democratic candidates who mostly avoided the issue in the last four presidential campaigns. Clinton herself had less to say on gun violence during her 2008 campaign.
Clinton is appealing to Democrats whose views, polls show, have become more aligned in favor of regulating firearms. Suburban women and black voters tend to favor regulating guns. Clinton does well with both groups already, but she can press her edge further against Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont by highlighting the issue.
Clinton also appears to be betting that strong support in both parties for tougher background checks rules will make gun control an issue that at least does not hurt with swing voters while helping to turnout out Democratic base voters in November.
The Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, and other mass shootings, as well as demographic changes in the Democratic party, have contributed to shifting views on the issue.
Clinton has campaigned this year with a group of mothers whose children were killed in police custody or by gun violence in incidents that helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement. Three of the so-called “Mothers of the Movement” joined Clinton Saturday.
“We must stand up to the gun lobby, just as we must end police violence and killings,” she said. “They are part of the same threat that too often injures and even kills too many young people,” she said.
Clinton noted Sunday that she is only candidate in the presidential race pushing proposals to reduce urban gun violence.
“The gun lobby is the most powerful lobby in Washington, in our country,” she said. “Nobody else running on either side is willing to take the stands that I think must be taken.”
At an event in Brooklyn, Clinton attacked Sanders for his waffling over his position on the right of the gun violence victims to sue gun makers and sellers they allege acted carelessly. Sanders has said he does not think Newtown victims families should be able to sue the maker of an AR-15 used in the massacre.
The Vermont senator “says they should not have their day in court,” Clinton said. “I say we need to change the law that keeps them out of court, and so many others.”
Sanders seemed to backtrack his comments earlier in the week on Sunday. “Of course they have a right to sue, anyone has a right to sue,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Clinton, a former New York senator, also held festive get out the vote events Sunday in Washington Heights and Staten Island.
“We say to Donald Trump — basta!” Clinton said in Washington Heights, a Hispanic community where Trump’s immigration views are unpopular. Basta means “enough.”
