Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) elaborated on her spat with Ted Cruz during a hearing on a federal assault weapons ban on Thursday, saying she resented the tone of the junior Senator from Texas.
“Well, I just felt patronized,” Feinstein told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “I felt he was somewhat arrogant about it. When you come from where I’ve come from and what you’ve seen, when you found a dead body and put your finger in bullet holes, you really realize the impact of weapons. And then as you go up the technical ladder with these weapons, and they become more sophisticated, and more the product of a battlefield, and you’ve got these huge clips, or drums of 100 bullets out there that people can buy, when you see these weapons becoming attractive to grievance killers, people who take them into schools, into theaters, into malls, you wonder, does America really need these weapons? My answer to that is no. And so it’s based on my experience.”
Cruz, a former constitutional law professor, recited portions of the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and asked Feinstein whether the power of government to restrict certain types of guns would be equally appropriate given those provisions.
“Let me just make a couple of points in response. One, I’m not a sixth grader. Senator, I’ve been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in, I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons,” she said.
Feinstein served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the 1970s, announcing the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk.
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