The Democratic presidential hopeful ratcheted up her attack on the powerful U.S. gun industry at a campaign stop in Coralville on Tuesday.
By Quentin Misiag
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CORALVILLE — Hillary Clinton kick-started a pledge to take on the powerful U.S. gun industry on Tuesday, citing a summer shooting in the Coral Ridge Mall as one example of why more attention needs to be brought to the increasingly pivotal election topic of gun violence.
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“Some people say, ‘You know, this is an urban problem; you know, this happens somewhere else,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in front of a park shelter shaded by colorful fall foliage at Coralville’s Morrison Park. “But it’s not true. This is a danger, a threat, everywhere in our country.”
Recognizing that she was addressing approximately 500 people in what has become Bernie Sanders country, Clinton used the first of two stops in the state Tuesday to both distance herself further and dig at her chief Democratic rival.
Clinton touched down in Iowa just a few hours after her national campaign launched a new TV ad buy in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Titled “Together,” the ad, is now playing in all of both state’s media markets.
“How many people have to die before we actually act, before we come together as a nation?” Clinton says in the 30-second spot.
Sanders — who many in Johnson and Poweshiek Counties see as a liberal hero who challenges the establishment naysayings of Clinton — represents a rural state and has stumbled on the campaign trail when his record on gun control is brought up.
On the stump, he has spoken of gun violence as a primarily “urban issue.”
Early on in her nearly hourlong Coralville address, Clinton vowed to make gun regulation a “voting issue” for Democrats, just as gun rights have become a high-profile campaign promise among some Republicans.
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Clinton promised to close loopholes in the federal background-check system and said she wants to overturn liability protections currently offered for gun manufacturers.
The American gun and ammunition industry had annual revenue of $1.5 billion as of August, according to the August IBIS World Guns & Ammunition Manufacturing Market Research Report.
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“The epidemic is overwhelming, but it is our children we are talking about,” said Shelley Kerr, a more than 20-year resident of Iowa and mother of two young boys, before introducing Clinton.
“Instead of becoming numb, I have become angry,” Kerr said. “I cannot be a bystander any longer. We need gun reform now.”
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Clinton claimed that 90 people a day die from gun violence in the U.S. was one of only a few lines in which she cited direct numbers. Clinton said that daily number equates to 33,000 gun-related deaths each year.
After months of faltering in the polls against Sanders, Clinton has again “re-established dominance” running up to the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, according to the latest Public Policy Polling survey, released Monday.
Of the 615 usual Democratic voters surveyed, 57 percent of state Democrats said they would like to see Clinton as their party’s candidate for president in 2016, compared with 25 percent for Sanders, 7 percent for former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, and 1 percent for Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig.
Monday’s poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. Eighty percent of participants responded by phone, with the remaining 20 percent responding on the Internet.
