Flashback: Sen. Dianne Feinstein Has Conceal Carry Permit

President Barack Obama at a White House press conference on Wednesday said that he intends to take action in the area of gun control legislation next year. “Any single gun law cannot solve all these problems,” he said. 

“This time, the words need to lead to action,” President Obama said. We are going to need to work on making access to mental healthcare at least as easy as access to guns.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D – CA), author of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, is leading the charge on Capitol Hill to bring back the legislation since it expired in 2004.

Feinstein’s plans to resuscitate the gun ban law comes on the heels of the deadly mass slaughter at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut by gunman Adam Lanza.

After the deadly Aurora, Colorado shooting Feinstein criticized those who said responsible conceal carry permit holders could have stopped gunman James Holmes, saying “…and maybe you could have had a firefight and killed many more people. These are people in a theater.”

Opponents of the Assault Weapons Ban point to Feinstein’s hypocrisy on the issue, as the Senator herself said she obtained a concealed carry permit in California when she felt her life was threatened. In 1995, Feinstein described this experience:

“Less than 20 years ago, I was the target of a terrorist group. It was the New World Liberation Front. They blew up power stations and put a bomb at my home when my husband was dying of cancer and the bomb was set to detonate around 2 ‘o clock in the morning, but it was a construction explosive that doesn’t detonate when it drops below freezing. It doesn’t usually freeze in San Francisco, but on this night it dropped below freezing and the bomb didn’t detonate.

“I was very lucky, but I thought of what might have happened. Later the same group shot out all the windows of my home and I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself, because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. When I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick, I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out I was going to take them with me. Now having said all of that, that was period of time ago and I’ve watched through these 20 years as terrorism has increased both on the far extremist left and the far extremist right in this country.”