If there’s one thing that Eric Holder regrets during his time as attorney general for the United States, it’s his failure to press through a Second Amendment crackdown on the heels of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead, he said.
“I think the inability to pass reasonable gun safety laws after the Newtown massacre is something that weighs heavily on my mind,” Mr. Holder said during an interview with CNN.
He was speaking of the White House push to pass a federal background check mandate for all commercial gun sales, as well as an outright ban on so-called assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines, in the wake of the December 2012 school tragedy.
The last of the legislative efforts to fail was a universal background check law that couldn’t make it out of the Democrat-controlled Senate. President Obama then announced a slew of executive actions to curb gun rights.
But Mr. Holder still reflected over the stronger legislation that never did pass.
“And the thought that we could not translate that horror into reasonable — I mean, really reasonable gun safety measures that were supported by the vast majority of the American people is for me something that I take personally as a failure,” he said, The Hill reported. “And something that I think we as a society should take as a failure — a glaring failure that I hope will ultimately be rectified.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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