Last night 2020 Presidential hopeful Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was the featured guest at a Fox News televised town hall event at University of Dubuque.
One topic of discussion at the event revolved around gun rights. More specifically, Gillibrand's history with the National Rifle Association (NRA). Gillibrand passionately slammed the NRA during her anti-firearm diatribe. But her past statements on the NRA don't exactly match her present. Let's take a look at what she said last night and what she said over a decade ago.
Gillibrand seemed to get a wee bit carried away while she was ranting. She used the Las Vegas massacre as an example of Trump's inaction on gun control, stating that he never banned bump stocks, the gun modification the shooter used to simulate fully-automatic firearms, after the tragedy.
Of course, any gun rights advocate will tell you: Trump actually did ban bump stocks. Gillibrand is just wrong. The ban went into effect in early April, 2019.
Fortunately for TV viewers, Fox News' Chris Wallace called out Kirsten on some (but not all) of her misleading rhetoric. He starts by pointing out that her plans for increased gun control would have done little to stop the specific mass shooting incidents she was using as examples.
Gillibrand's answer couldn't have been more ridicolous: "stop being beholden to the NRA like President Trump is."
Funny thing about that... Gillibrand spent a lot of time attacking the National Rifle Association (NRA) at the town hall event, but she hasn't always been a critic of the NRA. In fact, back in 2006 when Gillibrand was running in New York's 20th congressional district, she had an A rating with the NRA and she was damn proud of that fact. She bragged about her support for gun rights because she was running in a district that values 2nd amendment rights.
Now the times have changed and Gillibrand has flipped. She claims her stance on gun rights changed because she's learned more about gun violence, but the only thing that's changed is the people she's trying to impress. Progressive voters in Democrat presidential primary elections don't like gun rights, so neither does Gillibrand.
When Gillibrand says we need to stop the NRA, it's just hot air, folks. The only thing she's interested in stopping is the momentum of fellow candidates Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.