Yet McMurray also supports a federal assault weapons ban, adding that it should be more carefully crafted than the one in the SAFE Act. He said in an interview that weapons such as the AR-15 – used by both responsible gun owners and mass shooters – could still be permitted in narrow circumstances, perhaps with a special license.

But "bump stocks" should be banned because they allow people to shoot indiscriminately into large crowds, McMurray said, adding that background checks should cover all gun purchases.

"I want to make sure that the most dangerous and violent weapons aren't in the hands of the most dangerous people," he said.

To hear the Collins camp tell it, though, McMurray has staked out a radical anti-gun agenda and then tried to hide it. Baldassarre, the Collins spokeswoman, noted that McMurray even deleted one of the tweets where he advocated strict gun control measures, as well as a part of his website where he did the same.

"Nate McMurray knows just how extreme and out of touch his anti-Second Amendment position is with New York voters, and that’s why he’s scrambling to hide it," she said.

McMurray said the deletions were just routine changes.