LAS VEGAS — Democratic presidential candidates reiterated their call for gun control Wednesday and urged Americans to keep up the fight for change, sidestepping the issue of impeachment in Washington and whether it will divert lawmakers.
At a gun policy forum in Nevada, Cory Booker said the National Rifle Association and the corporate gun lobby are not the only forces stopping progress on gun control.
“Change never comes from Washington. It comes to Washington by Americans that demand it,“ the New Jersey senator said. He added later that “Every one of us in America, right now, by doing nothing, we are implicated in this. …. We all have to take responsibility.”
The forum — located about 2 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, the site of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history — was held as an effort to keep gun violence front and center of the debate and give 2020 presidential candidates a chance to showcase their plans to combat the epidemic. Negotiations between President Trump’s administration and lawmakers have halted over background checks legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled House, an effort that faced long odds even before the impeachment inquiry began.
Booker was among nine White House hopefuls to speak at the forum Wednesday, almost two years to the day after a man rained gunfire from the window of a high-rise hotel onto a country music festival below, killing 58 people. The forum is being hosted by MSNBC, March for Our Lives and Giffords, the advocacy organization set up by former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot and gravely wounded during a constituent meeting in 2011 in Tucson.
Giffords opened the event with brief remarks calling for Democrats, Republicans and independents to come together and fight for change.
“Stopping gun violence takes...
