In an MSNBC Town Hall in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton repeated her intention to tackle gun control on her first day of office and advance it beyond what President Barack Obama has been able to accomplish.
Clinton declared her intention to reauthorize Obama’s executive orders and mused about working with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., “one of the most effective legislators in taking on the gun lobby,” should Democrats regain control of the Senate. She blamed “out of control” gun violence on the “gun culture.” She listed news reports of local murders and then incorrectly intimated such criminal violence killed “33,000 Americans a year.” (Annually, two-thirds of that number are suicides, not homicides.)
Twice, she exhorted listeners to “make it a voting issue.” Clinton would love to shift the focus from her foreign policy failures as secretary of state, the ongoing FBI investigation into her emails and the Benghazi attack, but she is facing an uphill battle: A Jan. 2 Gallup poll ranked “guns/gun control” near the bottom of Americans’ most pressing concerns (2 percent).
