Clinton, who bashed guns eight years ago, will have a very different message for same group on Tuesday. 'Annie Oakley' changes her tune

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who has cast herself in the past few days as a champion of gun owners, had a very different message when she spoke eight years ago to the Newspaper Association of America.

“ CLINTON TAKES AIM AT GUNS,” said the all-caps headline on the group’s Web site after she told members in May 2000, during her Senate campaign, that “there isn’t a more important task” than passing gun-safety laws.


On Tuesday, she'll speak to a luncheon meeting of the same group — with a very different message.

Over the weekend, Clinton sought to capitalize on remarks Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made about gun owners by casting herself as a Second American champion and reminiscing about how “my dad …. taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl.”

Shooting, she said Saturday, is “part of the culture … part of a way of life” in some rural areas of Pennsylvania, which hold its primary a week from Tuesday.

Clinton was so enthusiastic about her remarks that Obama mocked them on Sunday by saying: “She's running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she VALUES the Second Amendment — she's talkin' like she's Annie Oakley,” the frontier markswoman.

But when she spoke to the newspaper association in 2000, she said that “one of the reasons I am running for the Senate” is that “we need a comprehensive plan to stop gun violence.”

Clinton was running for senator from New York at the time, and her message did not directly contradict what she’s saying now. In the speech, Clinton was talking about handguns, not hunting weapons like shotguns.

But the contrast in emphasis provides a jarring reminder of how times, messages and circumstances change during campaigns.

A Clinton aide asserted that the Obama campaign is trying to turn the debate over his controversial San Francisco remarks into one about gun policy, when she contends the issue is elitism.

“This is not a contest about who can be a more avid aficionado of guns and ammo,” the aide said. “This is about what Obama said about people living in small towns.

“Hillary is not a hunter – she doesn’t purport to be. She has gone hunting but frankly it’s somewhat beside the points. It’s about whether you respect people who live in these small towns and rural communities.”

The Clinton campaign was not ready to preview the content of Tuesday’s remarks. But one source said: “It’s not a gun-control speech.”