California’s longest-serving Senator, Diane Feinstein, who was a non-stop crusader for limiting gun rights is dead at age 90. She rose in power due to a high profile shooting in San Francisco’s city hall and went on to build much of her career on the fight to limit Second Amendment rights and outlaw classes of firearms and accessories.
From CNBC . . .
After two failed bids for mayor, she was elected president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors in 1978, becoming the first woman to hold the title.
Feinstein was made acting mayor of the city later that year, after then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, her colleague on the board of supervisors, were assassinated by Dan White, a former member of the same board.
In later interviews, Feinstein recalled finding Milk’s body and searching for a pulse by putting her finger in a bullet hole.
Feinstein was the first to announce the murders to the press. She was appointed mayor a week later, again becoming the first woman elevated to the office.
The tragedy had the side effect of jumpstarting Feinstein’s political career, but the trauma of the day stuck with her even decades later.
“I never really talk about this,” Feinstein said with a sigh when asked about the murders in a CNN interview in 2017.
A tireless civilian disarmament crusader, Feinstein — who used to carry a gun herself — wrote the 1994 “assault weapons” ban that both the New York Times and a federal government study acknowledged was an abject failure. Nonetheless, she never stopped trying to enact another one.
This is all we’ll say about that.
