Senator Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the Senate and outspoken gun prohibitionist who once acknowledged that if she’d had the votes, she would have outright banned so-called “assault weapons,” has died, multiple reports confirm. She was 90.
Feinstein, now being portrayed by NBC News as a “centrist Democrat…known for trying to find common ground with Republicans,” was a perennial anti-gunner who famously noted during one interview, “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them… ‘Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ’em all in,’ I would have done it.”
Second Amendment advocates never forgot nor forgave her for what they considered her gun control extremism.
Feinstein, as recalled by CNBC, was a San Francisco native whose political career began in local politics. She rose to the presidency of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978, and then became acting mayor when then-Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, were assassinated by former supervisor, Dan White the same year.
The aging senator had been in ill health for some months, and there was mounting pressure for her to step down. She reportedly planned to retire at the end of her current term. She was the longest-serving U.S. Senator from California.
Her death now opens the door for Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor, who most likely will be another liberal Democrat.
Earlier this year, Feinstein joined fellow anti-gunners Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both Connecticut Democrats, introducing legislation to ban so-called “assault weapons” and the “Age 21 Act,” which would raise the minimum age for buying semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21.
An Internet site listing some of her most famous quotes included this one about criminals, which brought guffaws from gun owners: “When the gunman realizes that nobody else is armed, he will lay down his weapons and turn himself in … that’s just human nature.”
“We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines.”
And yet she also apparently said this: “Once you sacrifice your rights, it’s hard to get those rights protected again.”
