After Charleston, Clinton calls for 'common-sense' gun reforms

With tears welling in her eyes, Hillary Clinton on Saturday delivered an emotional call to action after the Charleston church shooting, first vowing to fight for “common-sense” gun reforms, then shifting to an assessment of racism in America.

“Race remains a deep fault line in America,” Clinton said, speaking in front of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco. “Millions of people of color still experience racism in their everyday lives.”


The massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, forced Clinton off of her stump speech as she sought to confront some of the country’s most intractable problems a week after her first big campaign speech on Roosevelt Island.

Clinton’s voice swelled with emotion as she described the testimony of the families of the nine shooting victims, who offered forgiveness to the alleged gunman Dylann Roof on Friday at a bond hearing.

“On Friday, one by one, grieving parents and siblings stood up in court and looked at that young man who had taken so much from them, and said, ‘I forgive you,’” Clinton said. “Their act of mercy was more stunning than his act of cruelty.”

She said one of her first reactions was to ask “how it could be possible that we, as a nation, still allow guns to fall into the hands of people whose hearts are filled with hate.”

Acknowledging that gun ownership is part of the fabric of many law-abiding communities in the country, Clinton said firmly that the nation “can have common-sense gun reforms that keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the violently unstable, while respecting responsible gun owners.”

She said she agreed with President Barack Obama that the issue of gun ownership has been politically poisoned.

“It makes no sense that we couldn’t come together to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, or people suffering from mental illnesses, even people on the terrorist watch list,” she said. “That doesn’t make sense, and it is a rebuke to this nation we love and care about.”

But Clinton said the deeper challenge the country faces is racism. “Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished,” she said.

“So many of us hoped that by electing our first black president, we had turned the page on this chapter in our history,” she said, adding that millions of Americans are held back by racism every day.

Black people are three times as likely to be denied a mortgage, she said, and the median wealth of a black family in 2013 was $11,000, compared with $134,000 for a white family. She said black children were 500 percent more likely to die of asthma than white kids.

“More than half a century after Dr. King marched, and Rosa Parks sat and John Lewis bled, after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and so much else, how can any of these things be true?” she asked. “But they are.”

She said racism was pervasive in our society beyond the “kooks and clansmen,” noting that well-meaning, open-minded white people still feel a “twinge of fear” at the sight of a young black man in a hoodie. “We can’t hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in America,” she said.

“I known it’s not usual for someone running for president to say what we need more of in this country is love and kindness,” she said, “but that’s exactly what we need more of.”