During a January 30 campaign speech at Iowa State University, Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton rebuked a proposed law allowing teenagers to use handguns while target shooting with their parents.
WeAreIowa.com reports that the proposed law–the Youth Safety and Parental Rights Act–is intended to recognize the legality of teenagers and pre-teens learning gun safety and target shooting with “a handgun with their parents permission and supervision.” Clinton criticized the legislation by pointing a finger at the NRA and suggesting the law is being pushed so a 14-year-old can legally own a gun.
According to Politico, Clinton said, “The NRA is interested in ‘lowering the age from 14 to let more children legally have guns.” She suggested the law would result in more deaths when “children” find “loaded guns.”
Again, the proposed law is not about lowering the age for legal gun ownership. Rather, it is about making sure teens and pre-teens can learn gun safety and shoot a handgun with their parents’ “permission and supervision.” And two of the bill’s strongest proponents, 12-year-old Meredith Gibson and 10-year-old Natalie Gibson, support the bill because they want to be able to go shooting with their father.
On February 1 Breitbart News reached out to the NRA regarding the way Clinton characterized the law. The NRA said:
This is the typical Hillary hypocrisy and double speak. Eight years ago when Hillary was trying to win over Second Amendment supporters, she talked about learning to shoot with her father when she was ‘a little girl.’ But now she wants to deny that same learning experience to youth in Iowa. These girls and their father are simply asking for the ability to do what youth in other states can do and what federal law expressly permits– learn handgun safety from their parent in a safe and responsible way.
AWR Hawkins is a Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.