Thread by @paulheintz

Here’s a THREAD about why I wrote 5,500 words for @sevendaysvt about @BernieSanders’ evolving position on gun rights — and what I found: sevendaysvt.com/vermont/sticki…

@sevendaysvt @BernieSanders After the March mass shooting in New Zealand, @Bernie Sanders tweeted that it’d “been 2,293 days since Sandy Hook” and that it was “past time that we take on the NRA and pass gun safety legislation.”

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1110670596428521476

I noted, quoting a March 2013 column I’d written, that 85 days after Sandy Hook, @BernieSanders told me he wasn’t sure he’d vote for an assault weapons ban.

https://twitter.com/paulheintz/status/1110897433779806209

A spokesperson and a senior adviser to @BernieSanders went at me over email, suggesting that I’d misinterpreted him back in 2013. So I dug up a transcript and a tape of the interview — and I was pretty surprised by what I found…

I’d actually failed to use the most newsworthy quote from @BernieSanders: Three months after Sandy Hook, he told me, "My own view on guns is: Everything being equal, states should make those decisions.”

(BTW: If you think I misinterpreted @BernieSanders, listen to the interview yourself. We posted it in the story: sevendaysvt.com/vermont/sticki…)

That made me think about Peter Smith, the GOP congressman that @BernieSanders unseated in 1990 after Smith flip-flopped on gun rights and cosponsored an assault weapons ban. I’d spoken to him once before, soon after Sandy Hook: sevendaysvt.com/vermont/guns-n…

He’d agreed to just one interview when @BernieSanders first ran for president, with @Fahrenthold, but even then he wouldn’t talk about the 1990 race. (If you’re interested in this subject, definitely read @Fahrenthold’s story: washingtonpost.com/politics/how-t…)

So I called Peter Smith and, lo and behold, he talked. The @NRA’s involvement, he told me, was “the predominant reason” @BernieSanders was elected to Congress. "He would like to have the reason why he won the first race go away," Smith said. "But it's a matter of public record."

Then I hit the libraries and the Vermont Historical Society, which had a videotape of a 1990 debate hosted by Vermont hunters that focused largely on gun control. We posted it online for the first time, here:

Newspaper archives made clear that gun control — and the NRA — played a significant role in @BernieSanders' victory, as did Sanders' careful courting of hunters. Like at this Ludlow forum, where he said, "People pull the trigger, not the guns themselves."

@BernieSanders "We don't like everything that Mr. Sanders has to say about firearms," NRA lobbyist James Baker said in October 1990. "But he's been up front about it. He's at least as good, if not better, than Mr. Smith."

After @BernieSanders took office, he voted against the Brady Bill multiple times (four by my count, five by @PolitiFact's): politifact.com/truth-o-meter/…

And, most surprisingly, he voted to grant immunity to gun manufacturers, which was at odds with Sanders' history of "railing at corporate interests," @greggvt wrote at the time.

After Sandy Hook, @BernieSanders finally embraced federal gun control — after decades of skepticism.

"It's a local control issue," he'd said in his failed 1988 congressional race. "In Vermont, it is not my view that the present law needs any changing."

But the shift wasn't immediate. Three months after Sandy Hook, he told me, "If you passed the strongest gun-control legislation tomorrow, I don't think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen, which are really tragedy." sevendaysvt.com/vermont/sticki…

Now, @BernieSanders characterizes himself as a gun control champion. After the Virginia Beach mass shooting last month, he wrote this:

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1134609806482989056

His senior adviser, Jeff Weaver (who was there in '88 and '90), claims that his position has not shifted in all these years.

"I think his fundamental view has been unchanged," Weaver told me.

sevendaysvt.com/vermont/sticki…

But, well, hasn't it?

So why does this matter now, three decades after the 1990 election?

Because the central argument of @BernieSanders' 2020 presidential campaign is that he's taken the principled position all along — and hasn't shifted with the winds of politics.

But when it comes to gun control, that doesn't appear to be the case.

END.

sevendaysvt.com/vermont/sticki…

@BernieSanders (If the chronology of @BernieSanders' gun votes is confusing you, check out this interactive timeline we put together for the piece: sevendaysvt.com/vermont/sticki… h/t @doneggert & @asuozzo)

Sorry, one more thing: In defending his position on guns, @BernieSanders typically points to his long-running support for an assault weapons ban:

“In 1988, I lost an election because I said we should not have assault weapons on the streets of America.”

sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/arc…

It's true that, in 1990, @BernieSanders & others spoke about his support in '88 for such a ban:

"Bernie told us in 1988 that he supports a ban on semiautomatic rifles, and he's said the same thing this year," a gun shop owner told the AP in 9/90.

scribd.com/doc/296081604/…

But I couldn't find any contemporaneous evidence that, in '88, he spoke publicly about that position. And when I asked @BernieSanders' campaign for help, they pointed only to stories from 1990.

@BernieSanders Here's what the Rutland Herald reported in 6/90 about '88: "Sanders said repeatedly that gun control was a local issue and avoided taking a public stand on bans. He now denies that his support of assault gun legislation represents a change in his position."

It's possible I'm missing something here, but it seems unlikely that an issue that hardly came up in '88 would have swayed the outcome of the election.

For more on this, read @myhlee's excellent fact-checker, which called the claim "misleading": washingtonpost.com/news/fact-chec…