McConnell email: Obama is "coming for your guns"
In an email to potential donors, the re-election campaign for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., charged that President Obama and Senate Democrats are "coming for your guns," according to WFPL News in Louisville.
"You and I are literally surrounded," McConnell's campaign manager Jesse Benton reportedly wrote in the January 20 email. "The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out-assault on the Second Amendment. On your rights. On your freedom."
Mr. Obama last week laid out a sweeping plan for reducing gun violence, which includes implementing universal background checks for gun sales, the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban, capping ammunition magazines, increasing punishments for gun trafficking, and improving insurance coverage for mental health.
As he explained his plan, the president stressed that he intends to respect the rights afforded by the Second Amendment. "I respect our strong tradition of gun ownership and the rights of hunters and sportsmen," he said.
McConnell's campaign, however, characterized Mr. Obama's plan as a "thinly-veiled" scheme to undermine gun rights.
The email follows a robocall that the senator recorded and sent to voters over the weekend, in which he promised to keep "fighting tooth and nail, to protect your Second Amendment rights."
McConnell, who took office in 1985 and is Kentucky's longest-serving senator ever, is up for re-election in 2014.
Republicans last week were, for the most part, resistant to the president's plans, although there is some bipartisan support for certain proposals, such as universal background checks.
In a private meeting Saturday with top Democratic donors, former President Bill Clinton reportedly warned Mr. Obama's supporters that they shouldn't underestimate the conservative passion for gun rights.
"Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them," Clinton said. "A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things. I know because I come from this world."
