MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Days after a deadly shooting in Oregon, Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled new gun control measures Monday aimed at strengthening background checks on gun buyers and eliminating legal immunity for sellers.
During a daylong campaign swing through New Hampshire, Clinton proposed a repeal of legislation that shields gun manufacturers, distributors and dealers from most liability suits, even in the case of mass shootings like the one that killed nine people at a community college on Thursday.
Clinton has made strengthening gun laws a centerpiece of her presidential campaign, vowing she would use her executive power as president to expand background checks for sellers at gun shows and online and back legislation banning domestic abusers from purchasing guns.
She also backed congressional efforts to stop retailers from selling guns to people with incomplete background checks, as happened when Dylann Roof, the man charged in the Charleston church shooting, bought his gun.
“I will try every way I can to get those guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them,” she told voters gathered for a pancake breakfast town hall meeting in Hollis, New Hampshire. “We need to prevent these kinds of terrible crimes that are happening.”
The plan marks an effort by Clinton to stake out liberal ground against her closest rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. While Sanders has wooed the Democratic base with his liberal positions on issues like income inequality and college debt, he’s struggled to defend a more mixed record on gun legislation — a reflection, he says, of his rural, gun-friendly home-state.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2013, Sanders backed all the Democratic gun bills brought up in Congress. But in 1993, he voted against the landmark Brady handgun bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period for gun purchasers, and he backed the 2005 legislation granting legal immunity to many in the gun industry.
Sanders now says he supports banning assault weapons and closing the so-called “gun show loophole” that exempts private, unlicensed gun sales from background checks.
Clinton declined to directly go after that record on Monday morning, saying she’d let “Senator Sanders talk about himself.”
But she said she wasn’t surprised by his recent rise in New Hampshire polls, mentioning his long tenure representing a neighboring state.
“I really believe this is great for the Democrats and this election,” she said of the unexpectedly competitive contest. “We really want to turn out as many people as possible.”
Clinton has emerged as one of the fiercest proponents of tougher gun control after a series of shootings over the past several months has reignited debate over gun laws in the presidential campaign
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Oh noes! Where is Crazy Wayne when we needs he??? Saves us, Crazy Wayne, saves us!!!
“I will try every way I can to get those guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them,”
And she is running for President? She’d probably do a better job if she didn’t feed right wing tropes.
how about:
“I will try every way I can to keep those guns from getting into the hands of people who shouldn’t have them,”
as in not taking guns away but preventing the wrong people from getting them in the first place.
OH SNAP!
I am loving Hillary!
The argument is always that gun laws must prevent all shootings forever or there’s no point. Reduction of death is worthless.
In America, more preschoolers are shot dead each year (82 in 2013), than police officers in the line of duty (27 in 2013), according to figures from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI.
Others are free to do nothing or keep trying to stop us. But, the rest of us care about saving American lives - and there’s more of us than you.
Hillary is such a fake. Big deal…wants to reverse the legal immunity for the gun dealers and pushers!
The rest of the world is wondering what the hell is wrong with the USA - even Australia (a rather conservative country) woke up and passed rigid gun control laws!
The US has only itself to blame for our 34,000 gun related deaths per year! That’s right…we average 34,000 gun related deaths in the US each year! Many of these killings would be avoided with real and common sense gun control:
We should be tracking guns just like we track cars via motor vehicle registrations!
PERIOD!