Clinton announces gun control plan
In the aftermath of the deadly school shooting in Oregon, Hillary Clinton offered an emotional appeal for tougher gun control laws.
Campaigning in New Hampshire Monday, Clinton vowed to tighten regulations on the buyers and sellers of firearms through congressional and executive action. She asked, “How many people have to die before we actually act?”
Clinton was joined by the mother of a six-year-old victim of the 2012 school shooting in Connecticut.
During a campaign appearance at a town hall, Clinton denounced what she called the “extremism” that she said has come to characterize the debate over the nation’s gun laws. She expressed both sadness and anger, as she accused her Republican opponents of “surrender” to a difficult political problem.
John Morse, former president of the Colorado senate, was one of two Democratic senators recalled in 2013 for supporting controversial gun bills in Colorado. The bills mandated background checks for private and online gun sales, and limited magazine sizes.
Morse told KRDO NewsChannel 13 Monday that he agreed with Clinton’s proposal for universal background checks for those wishing to buy a firearm at a gun show. The measure is already in effect in Colorado, but is not required in many other states.
“What Hillary Clinton is talking about is closing those loopholes nationwide which is a good idea. It just won’t have a direct impact on Colorado,” Morse said. “If you fail a background check in Colorado, you can just go to Wyoming and attend a gun show and not have to get a background check at all.”
Morse added that the majority of Americans support background checks. He said he has no regrets over his support of the gun control measures.
“I paid a very small price for the public safety we have in Colorado,” Morse said. “Since those bills have passed, we’ve had thousands of people that have not passed background checks in Colorado. It only takes one. If one of those people had gotten a gun, it would be additional dead people.”
But Daniel Cole, executive director of the El Paso County Republican Party, told KRDO NewsChannel 13 that universal background checks would do nothing to solve the problem of gun violence.
“I think she (Clinton) is clearly taking advantage of the situation. I think it’s fine to suggest proposals that would stop this sort of violence, but my view is this wouldn’t do that,” Cole said. “If you look at every mass murder that’s taken place in the last 50 years in the United States, every single one except for one happened in a gun-free zone. Let’s get rid of these gun-free zones instead of proposing solutions that are not at all coordinated to the actual violence we’re seeing.”
Cole argued that if others had been carrying a firearm on the Umpqua Community College campus at the time of Thursday’s mass shooting, things could have gone differently.
“If there are law-abiding citizens carrying arms, then they could have stopped it, and, moreover, the shooter might think twice before venturing into a place to commit a crime like that,” Cole said.
Clinton has made strengthening the nation’s gun laws a centerpiece of her presidential campaign following a series of mass shootings in the past few months.
Her campaign rolled out a robust set of proposals today, including using executive action as president to expand background check requirements. Under current federal law, such checks are not required for sales made at gun shows or over the Internet.
