Hillary Clinton walked back a statement her campaign made earlier this week that Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont had the highest per capita number of guns that were used for crimes in New York during a Democratic presidential debate on CNN Thursday night.
Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked the former secretary of state if she was blaming Vermont and implicitly Sanders for the Empire State’s gun violence.
“Of course not, of course not,” Clinton said before turning the conversation to national statistics about gun-related deaths and comparing each other’s congressional voting records.
Sanders went on the attack, asking Clinton if in fact Green Mountain State laws were not to blame for gun crimes in her home state, why she had released that statement.
“The facts are that most of the guns that end up committing crimes in New York come from out of state, they come from the kind of states that don’t have the kind of serious efforts to control guns that we do in New York,” Clinton responded.
“We hear a lot from Sen. Sanders about the greed and recklessness of Wall Street and I agree, we gotta hold Wall Street accountable, but what about the greed and recklessness of the gun manufacturers and dealers in America,” Clinton asked.
The former New York senator also drew attention to Sanders’ 1990 congressional campaign that benefitted from ads the National Rifle Association ran against his opponent. Clinton alleged the NRA’s indirect support contributed to Sanders’ voting against the Brady Bill on five occasions while in office.
Sanders brushed off the pro-gun lobby association and said his background as a lawmaker from Vermont, where there is “virtually no gun control,” would better enable him to “bring together consensus” on the issue.
Blitzer prodded Sanders on whether he would apologize to the families of the 20 children and six adults murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Sanders’ response was initially booed by the audience.
“What we need to do is to do everything that we can to make certain that guns do not fall into the hands of people who do not have them,” said Sanders.
After a follow-up question, Sanders added he did not believe he owed them an apology, but supported their right to sue the manufacturers and dealers of the weapons used in that incident.
