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CNN Host on Gillibrand's Gun Control Platform: 'You Get It'

Gillibrand has called for universal background checks, gun buybacks

August 20, 2019

CNN host Brooke Baldwin appeared to endorse Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's (D., N.Y.) stance on gun control during their interview Tuesday, telling the lawmaker "you get it."

Baldwin asked Gillibrand if she was "less hopeful" about whether laws like expanded background checks could get passed in the wake of recent mass shootings, given reports that President Donald Trump had privately backed off his support for such measures.

Gillibrand replied Trump lacked courage and wasn't willing to stand up to the National Rifle Association, saying there were plenty of "common-sense" measures that could be passed.

"Universal background checks, making sure we ban assault weapons and large magazines, and a federal, anti-gun trafficking law," Gillibrand said. "We shouldn't have to live in a world where kids doing back-to-school shopping at Walmart are afraid, where kids are doing shelter-in-place drills as opposed to mathematical drills. It's not what we should be aspiring to."

"How can President Trump get it? You get it," Baldwin said, interrupting. "How can President Trump get it? How can Senator Mitch McConnell get it?"

"I think people need to keep raising their voices," Gillibrand said. "We have mental health issues in every country around the globe, but only in America do you have these mass shootings, do you have gun violence on every street corner in big cities."

An emotional Baldwin rebuked Congress and the White House for what she viewed as lack of proper action in response to the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, earlier this month.

Baldwin also grew angry with a Florida Republican in 2018, shortly after the Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, for his resistance to discussing a ban on semiautomatic guns. He responded it would be a ban on nearly all guns, and at one point she demanded he stop returning to his "talking points."

Gillibrand has also expressed support for a mandatory "buyback" program for so-called "assault weapons" and criminal prosecution of those who didn't participate.

Gillibrand acknowledged during the interview she had appeared on CNN to convince viewers to donate $1 to her campaign. She is still short of the 130,000 unique donors to make the next round of debates, and she also needs to hit at least 2 percent support in three more polls in the next week.

She said Monday she would consider being the running mate for the eventual nominee.