Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who had championed gun rights as a congresswoman representing upstate New York, on Sunday touted her “F” rating from the National Rifle Association and says it’s not enough to care only about your own backyard.
“We have to look beyond our own backyard. We must care about others,” Ms. Gillibrand, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said at a Fox News town hall. “As an upstate congresswoman, I had an A rating by the NRA and when I became senator, I had a proud F. I’ve had that proud F for 10 years, and I’m very delighted to have a proud F.”
Asked what changed, she said: “Just realizing that every part of this country is not like my rural, upstate New York district.”
“Because the truth is, it wasn’t good enough to care only about your backyard - you’ve got to care about communities across this country,” she said.
She also called the NRA “the worst organization in this country.”
“Don’t let the NRA stand and speak for you, because they don’t. We don’t want needless and senseless gun [deaths] in America,” she said.
Ms. Gillibrand vowed to expand gun-purchase background checks, ban high-capacity ammunition magazines and military-style semiautomatic firearms, and work to pass a federal anti-gun trafficking law..
She also said she would ban bump stock-type devices, which the Trump administration has already done - to the consternation of many gun-rights advocates.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace pointed out that none of Ms. Gillibrand’s solutions would have prevented the recent shooting in Virginia Beach in which 12 people were killed.
“It’s not about one gun death, Chris, because if it was, we would have done this long ago,” she said. “We would have done something after the Sandy Hook shooting. We would have done something after the hundreds of gun deaths we’ve seen under President Trump and over the last decade.”
“But Congress has no guts. They [have] got no spine…they’re bought and paid for,” she said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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