Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) wants nothing to do with the "embarrassing" parts of her political past. Her once conservative takes on guns and immigration are almost too much to stomach, she said in a recent "60 Minutes" interview.
Gillibrand once had the NRA's blessing, earning an "A" rating for her pro-Second Amendment views and her defending the "family tradition of hunting to appeal to conservative voters in upstate New York."
In 2009, she even was proud to report that she keeps two guns under her bed.
“If I want to protect my family, if I want to have a weapon in the home, that should be my right,” she noted without shame.
Gillibrand now regrets these accolades, she revealed to "60 Minutes" reporter Sharyn Alfonsi over the weekend.
"After I got appointed, I went down to Brooklyn to meet with families who had suffered from gun violence in their communities," she said. "And you immediately experience the feeling that I couldn't have been more wrong. I only had the lens of upstate New York."
"But you had lived in New York City for a decade—" Alfonsi said before Gillibrand interrupted.
"I know, and that's why I was embarrassed," Gillibrand interjected. "I was wrong. What it's about is the power of the NRA and the greed of that industry. Let's be clear, it is not about hunters' rights. It's about money."
The senator is certainly not going to receive any praise from the NRA nowadays. She has lobbied for gun control after the shootings in Sandy Hook and the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). "Gun violence became very personal" for her after her friend Giffords was shot, she explained in an op-ed for The New York Daily News in December 2012.
Gillibrand's shifting position on guns was so stark that she changed her identity from Annie Oakley to Jane Fonda, according to her GOP opponent Chele Chiavacci Farley.
"That’s quite a change to the left,” Farley said.
It's not only guns. Gillibrand's critics accuse her of flip flopping on the issue of immigration too. For instance, she used to be against amnesty. Doesn't that view jive with the president's? Alfonsi wondered.
"I think his positions are racist," she quickly said.
When she's not running far away from Trump's policies, she's calling for his resignation.
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