A day after transitioning from an exploratory to an official presidential campaign, U.S. Sen, Kirsten Gillibrand came to Michigan, saying it's time to create a national call to action to counter the partisan divisions in America.

"We have to remind the country of who we actually are," said the New York Democrat. "We're the home of the free, the home of the brave. And if you are going to be brave, you have to do the hard things."

During a taping of an MSNBC town hall forum at the Rochester Mills Production Brewery in Auburn Hills on Monday afternoon, Gillibrand told an audience of about 200 people that she has had a change of heart on gun control and is firmly embracing Medicare for all and the Green New Deal.

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Regrets not doing more on gun control

Gillibrand said she regrets not doing more to fight for more gun control earlier in her political career.

"My community didn’t have the gun violence, so the biggest issue was hunting rights," she said. "My mother didn't just cook the Thanksgiving turkey, she shot the Thanksgiving turkey too."

Gillibrand, who grew up in upstate New York, said she supports universal background checks for gun purchases, restrictions on high-magazine ammunition clips and getting money out of politics so that gun manufacturers can't buy the support of politicians. While she accepts money from political action committees, she said she wants to switch to a system where campaigns are publicly financed.

"The powerful have unlimited power and money and that's the name of the game," she said. "They can funnel money into campaigns to make sure we don't have commonsense gun reform."

The Green New Deal and automakers

A.J. Freer, a UAW vice president at Local 600, said autoworkers are frustrated with companies like General Motors that got a substantial federal bailout and is announcing that it is closing plants.

"The 50- or 60-year-old autoworker is tired of hearing that we have to learn a new skill set," he said. "We need real solutions."

Gillibrand said that's one of the reasons she supports the Green New Deal, an aggressive environmental proposal that is geared toward addressing both climate change and income inequality facing American workers.

"We need to create incentives for the auto industry to keep jobs here with energy efficiencies, battery-propelled cars and less carbon emission cars," she said. "Why not unleash the innovation of the industry to create the cars of tomorrow?"

She also said she believes in a living minimum wage of $15 per hour, paid sick leave and affordable day care. And to make college more accessible to more students, she said she has an incentive plan for free college.

"Imagine this: telling every American kid that if you do a year of community service, you get two years of college free," she said. "Do two years of community service, you get four years free."

Making a pitch to be president

Gillibrand said she has the experience in both the House of Representatives and Senate to step into the presidency with ease.

She was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives until 2009 when she was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat vacated by Hillary Clinton when Clinton was appointed by President Barack Obama to become the secretary of state. Gillibrand easily won re-election to the Senate in 2012 and 2018 and has $10 million left over from her 2018 campaign that can be used for the upcoming presidential run.

She is one of six women who have entered the race for president, less than a year after women made historic gains in Congress and statewide and legislative offices across the country.

Michigan provides a potent example of the pink wave of 2018 with women winning all four statewide offices of governor, attorney general, secretary of state and U.S. Senate. A woman is the chief judge on the state Supreme Court, women picked up three seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, seven seats in the state Senate and eight seats in the state House of Representatives.

When former U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, was forced from office over sexual harassment allegations, Gillibrand was one of the first of his colleagues to call on him to resign.

"This is a very hard issue for so many Democrats. We missed him and we loved him, but there were eight credible allegations against him, two of them when he was a senator," she said. "I had a choice to make and if a few powerful donors are angry, that’s on them."

Gillibrand's second stop in Clawson on Monday was expected to be an appearance with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at a rally with Fems for Dems, an Oakland County-based group of women that was instrumental in turning at least six state House and Senate seats in Wayne and Oakland County from Republican to Democrat and helping turn two congressional seats from red to blue.

The MSNBC town hall segment is scheduled to air at 8 p.m. Monday.

Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.