It’s an odd thought experiment to imagine Bill Clinton’s campaign without his notorious anti-gun policies—culminating in his federal “assault weapons” ban—but there apparently was a point at which cooler heads attempted to prevail. According to The Washington Times, former Jimmy Carter press aide Jody Powell drafted a memo encouraging Clinton to steer clear, “… because [the NRA] is largely right when it claims that most gun-control laws inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime or criminals.” Clinton’s advisor George Stephanopoulos reportedly seemed to agree with the memo and encouraged Clinton’s other aides to engage in conversation about it.
It’s unlikely that anyone could have convinced Bill Clinton—or Hillary, for that matter—that going after law-abiding citizens’ firearms was a bad idea. But it’s interesting now to see just how obvious that fact was to everyone else in the room.
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