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Getty Clinton: 'It's just too easy' to reach for a gun in America

Hillary Clinton slammed the abundance of guns in the United States on Thursday, in her latest remarks stressing the need for a national movement to blunt the influence of the gun lobby and end the cycle of violence perpetuated with firearms.

"It is just too easy for people to reach for a gun to solve their problems. It makes no sense," Clinton said in remarks preceding a panel in Hartford, Connecticut, that featured family members of gun-violence victims, including at nearby Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. "And we can do this consistent with the Second Amendment, we can do this with the support of responsible gun owners, and that is exactly what we will do. And I want you to know that I know I don’t have all the answers.”

Prefacing her remarks in Connecticut ahead of the state's Tuesday primary, Clinton said, “I’m not here to make promises I can’t keep. I am here to tell you I will use every single minute of every single day if I’m so fortunate enough to be your president looking for ways that we can save lives, that we can change the gun culture."

“I’m raising it everywhere I go, because we need a national movement. The gun lobby is the most powerful lobby in Washington," Clinton said, touting Connecticut's laws as an exemplar for the rest of the country. "You can talk about Wall Street, the drug companies, the insurance companies, oil. They’re all powerful, don’t get me wrong. Nobody is more powerful than the gun lobby, because they have figured out how to intimidate elected officials at all levels, who basically just stopped thinking about this problem because they’re too scared to stand up to the NRA."

After a discussion with the panelists, Clinton remarked that some of them and others "who take a stand against gun violence and against the gun lobby ... are subjected to some of the most vile harassment on the internet that you can imagine."

Erica Smegielski, a panelist and Clinton supporter whose mother Dawn Hochsprung was the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary when she was killed in 2012, has also frequently called out Bernie Sanders on social media for his comments surrounding gun control.

"It is beyond decency. Erica found that out when she began to stand up and speak out," Clinton said. "There is an organized effort, again, to intimidate and silence—‘just go back and you know quit worrying about it, these things happen.'"

In attempting to explain why she is putting the issue into such stark relief this election season, Clinton said, “I think it’s just the accumulation over now about 25 years of being in too many rooms with too many people who have lost someone they loved to gun violence, and how it just doesn’t make sense to me.

"I find it absolutely indefensible, the arguments that are made by people who will not accept responsibility for what is going on in our country," she added. "And so I feel so privileged to be here with the panelists and to know there are others in this audience today who have gone through similar experiences and maybe even transformations about how one things and how dedicated you’ve become."

Jane Sanders objected to the event, with Bernie Sanders' wife telling CNN minutes later that she did not "like to see [tragedies] be politicized."

"When Secretary Clinton ran for the Senate in New York, she was very pro-gun control," Sanders said, remarking that her husband has a more solid record on the issue than Clinton's. "When she ran for the presidency against Barack Obama, she was very anti-gun control in 2008. And now that she’s running against Bernie, she’s back to for gun control."

Clinton expressed similar sentiments at a campaign stop with former Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday in Philadelphia, speaking before a panel of mothers who have lost their children to gun violence.

“We have just too many guns in the streets, in our homes, in our neighborhoods," Clinton said.