Colion Noir holds his own while debating gun policy on HBO (VIDEO)

While on “Real Time with Bill Maher” recently, the NRA commentator talked gun control with one of the ideological leaders of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party.

Of course, there were other people on the show, such as Maher himself, author Michael Pollan and radio show host Michael Smerconish, but it was the 10-minute interaction largely between Noir and Neera Tanden that made up the meat of the debate on guns.

For a stranger to Tanden, she was a Democrat staffer going as far back as the Dukakis for President campaign in 1988 then 20 years later was a policy director first for the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign and then for President Obama’s campaign before working as a senior adviser for the latter’s Department of Health and Human Services.

Since 2011 she has been the president of the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank founded by John Podesta. In her latter capacity, GQ described Tanden as Secretary Clinton’s “secretary of defense” due to her diehard Twitter attacks on Clinton’s critics.

In 2013, Tanden’s group issued a 13-proposal blueprint for beefing up the country’s gun laws ranging from “Taking military-grade weapons off the streets” to stripping gun rights from those on secretive government no-fly lists and more and better background checks. The wish list was pitched not only to lawmakers, but to President Obama as suggested executive actions.

With that in mind, it is not hard to understand where Noir and Tanden would bristle over ideology but it is still interesting to watch.