Hillary Clinton isn’t going to win many votes from NRA members. So whatever political idealism she may occasionally sacrifice for pragmatism on other issues remains undiluted when it comes to guns. The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination has said her presidency won’t be like a third term of Barack Obama. But on gun control, Clinton sounds eager to battle against what Obama has described as one of the signature frustrations of his presidency: the continued all-too-common loss of innocent American lives in a plague of gunfire.
Clinton tweeted today that we need to keep guns “out of the hands of domestic partners and convicted stalkers.” Her tweet pointed to some staggering figures her campaign has put together to help galvanize public sentiment around the gun control initiative. Clinton promises to start by closing loopholes in laws already on the books, the campaign says. Background checks work, but too often they fail to be completed. (20% to 40% of guns are bought without one, the campaign says.) The appeal is aimed especially at women, as the tweet indicates. Clinton says an American woman is 11 times more likely to be killed with a gun than her counterpart in “other high-income countries.”
We need to keep guns out of the hands of domestic partners and convicted stalkers. https://t.co/mGPKEgwaho pic.twitter.com/RB5LjpvvAQ
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 12, 2015