In an impromptu speech at the Brady Campaign‘s gun control advocates awards ceremony last week, Bill Clinton touted his gun legacy and called on gun crime victims to ramp up efforts to push through more 2nd Amendment restrictions.
At the May 4 award ceremony in Los Angeles, Clinton described passing the Brady Handgun Prevention Act of 1993 and the “assault weapons” ban in 1994 as “one of the greatest honors of my life.”
“One of the great honors of my life was signing the Brady law, and then a year later in the crime bill the assault weapons ban and the ammunition clip ban,” said Clinton, in front of a star-studded crowd that included the tasteless Sarah Silverman and Will Ferrell, who briefly entertained producing and starring in a film that mocked Ronald Reagan’s battle with Alzheimer’s.
After praising Obama for continuing to “keep pushing this [gun control] rock up the hill,” Clinton urged gun control advocates to keep fighting to get guns out of Americans’ hands, suggesting they use recent tragedies to do so.
“Don’t be afraid to talk to people who are skeptical, who live in different cultures and have different options,” he said. “You’re trying to ask them to create a little space in their mind and heart for the people who are innocent victims you are trying to save. And to do that, you have to look them in the eye, figuratively or literally. I want you to redeem the loss, and the meaning of the lives [lost to gun crimes].”
Greater gun control, he suggested, was a step towards being “a humane society,” concluding, “There have to be some things we can agree on that are the basic parameters of any democracy.”
Hillary Clinton has certainly not been “afraid” of calling for more restrictions on gun rights, declaring that America has “too many guns” and repeatedly vowing to use her executive power to force more gun control measures.