Hillary Clinton urges closing loopholes that cost lives

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton highlights the “genuine differences” between her and opponent Bernie Sanders in their policies on handling gun violence.

In an opinion piece published in The New York Daily News, Clinton listed closing federal law that shields the gun industry from liability lawsuits, expanding background checks and closing perceived loopholes in the system.

There are some common-sense steps we can take that are fully consistent with the law and Constitution to finally begin to tackle this scourge.

First, we need to repeal the law that gives the gun industry sweeping liability protections, so companies that make and sell guns can be held accountable when their products kill people. When the NRA pushed that misguided law through Congress, they said that preventing lawsuits was their top legislative priority. Now it’s making it harder for families who lost children in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, to sue Bushmaster for marketing its AR-15 assault rifle to civilians. As President, I’ll stand with the families victimized by guns, not the corporations that profit from them.

Second, we should implement comprehensive background checks. President Obama recently issued several executive orders designed to strengthen this federal system. Surveys have shown that even 85% of gun owners favor these checks. And it’s hard to believe that we still allow people on the no-fly list to purchase firearms. I think it’s pretty simple: If it’s too dangerous for you to be allowed on an airplane, it’s too dangerous for you to own a gun.

Third, we need to close the so-called “Charleston loophole.” Right now, a person with an arrest record can walk into a gun store to buy a gun, and if their background check isn’t completed within three business days, they can walk out with a firearm. It makes absolutely no sense. More than 55,000 gun sales that would otherwise have been blocked have been allowed to proceed because of this loophole. One of them was the gun bought by the white supremacist who murdered nine parishioners at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston last year.

It may be hard to believe, but this loophole isn’t the result of some accidental oversight in the law. It was created by a stand-alone amendment designed and written by the gun lobby.

This highlights a genuine difference in the Democratic presidential primary. On each of these critical issues — legal protections for gun makers, background checks and the Charleston loophole — my opponent voted with the NRA. In one recent debate, he defended one of these votes, and the NRA even tweeted that Senator Sanders “was spot-on in his comments about guns.”

If the NRA thinks you’re doing a good job, that’s a pretty good indication that something’s very wrong.

Read the full piece at the The New York Daily News

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