Hillary: ‘Immediate Response’ After Charleston Massacre Was Need for More Gun Control 

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

On Saturday, Hillary Clinton said one of the first things that came to mind after the Charleston church massacre was the need for more gun control–and how to politicize the tragedy to achieve it. She said Congress’s failure to pass strict gun control laws was “a rebuke” to the nation.

Addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco, Clinton, vowing to continue her fight for tougher gun control laws, said that “for me and many others one immediate response was to ask how it could be possible that we as a nation still allow guns to fall into the hands of people whose hearts are filled with hate.”

She said after the Charleston tragedy she wondered how the nation could “turn grief, confusion into purpose and action.”

“You can’t watch massacre after massacre and not come to the conclusion that, as President Obama said, we must tackle this challenge with urgency and conviction,” she declared.

Echoing President Barack Obama, who has already politicized the church shootings twice to push for more gun control laws, Clinton said “we can have commonsense gun reforms that keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the violently unstable while respecting responsible gun owners.” She said it made “no sense that bipartisan legislation to require universal background checks would fail” in Congress.

Clinton said Congress’s inability to pass gun control was “a rebuke to this nation we love and care about” and added that though “the politics on this issue have been poisoned… we can’t give up” because “the stakes are too high, the costs are too dear.”

“And I am not and will not be afraid to keep fighting for commonsense reforms and, along with you, achieve those on behalf of all who have been lost because of this senseless gun violence in this country,” she declared.

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