October 5, 2015

While speaking at a town hall in Hollis, NH, that was moderated by TODAY co-host Savannah Guthrie, Hillary Clinton, took a strong position on how she would strengthen gun control laws in America.

A woman in the audience said she was ashamed about our gun control laws, especially compared with other developed countries and wanted to know what she would do differently.

She said her eight-year-old son had regular lockdown drills at his school now, and wanted to know what Clinton would do about gun control as president:

Q: My son is eight, there are regular lockdown drills at his school now, it's part of life and yet I know I'm not alone saying enough is enough and I would like to know how as president, what specifically you would do for gun control?

Clinton: First of all, I share your feelings and just the sense that we have to take action. you have these terrible incidents like we just had in Oregon --children being killed in school, people in bible study in a church, being murdered on campuses and so many others. And then there are about 92 deaths by guns every day and most of them don't make the headlines. So I've introduced my platform for dealing with gun violence because I think we've got to as a nation do exactly what you said. Enough.

What do we have to try to accomplish. We need universal background checks, we know that they will work. (Applause) We need to close what's called the Charleston Loophole. The young man who killed the nine people in the church in Charleston -- there's a loophole in the Brady Bill that if you go to try to get a gun and they don't finish the background check in three days you can get the gun. We need to close the gun show loophole. I think it's 40 percent or so of the gun sales are done online, they're done at gun shows, they're done by people selling them out of the back of their cars, basically.

And we know where we enforce that kind of check we do keep guns out of the hands of people who are domestic abusers or in a hot rage go out to get a gun because of a domestic dispute.

So I really do want to push hard to get more sensible restraints on gun ownership in the wrong hands and then to try to keep track of people who shouldn't have guns.

I want to work with the Congress. We got very close. There was a bipartisan bill, it didn't go all the way. But I will always look for ways as president to try to tighten some of these checks, particularly to get more of the background checks done on more of the sales at gun shows and online than we currently have.

I don't blame you for looking at your nine-year old son and thinking, "Do I have to tell him to be scared?" Duck and cover exercises in your school in the United States of America? That's just wrong. So I'm determined to do something about it and I'll try every way I can to get those guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon