Election 2014

Rice touts gun-control measures

Blakeman says the economy is central to his campaign

Posted

Having picked up two endorsements from leading nonprofit gun-control groups in two days, 4th Congressional District candidate Kathleen Rice called on Sept. 24 for national legislation that would require gun-show background checks and restrictions on high-capacity, assault-style clips.

Rice, the Nassau County district attorney and a Democrat, called a news conference at her Garden City campaign headquarters to make the announcement. She is running against Republican Bruce Blakeman, the one-time presiding officer of the Nassau County Legislature.

Rice was joined by U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a nine-term Democrat from Mineola and one of Congress’s most prominent gun-control advocates, who will retire at year’s end because of a cancer diagnosis; and Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, one of the groups endorsing Rice. Barrett’s 40-year-old brother was murdered with an illegal .38-caliber handgun in Tulsa, Okla., in 1997.
“I have all the confidence in the world [Rice] will carry the torch on,” said McCarthy, whose husband was killed and her son severely injured by gunman Colin Ferguson in the Long Island Rail Road Massacre of 1993.

Every Town for Gun Safety, a group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, also endorsed Rice but did not send a representative to the news conference.

Every Town is pressing the gun-control issue hard in the midterm election, spending upward of $50 million and calling on every Senate and House candidate to answer a 10-question survey on the hot-button gun-control issues, including background checks and high-capacity magazines.

In a phone interview, Matt Coleman, a spokesman for Blakeman, said that Rice had failed to show up for a candidates’ forum at noon that day at the Garden City Hotel, five minutes from her campaign headquarters, sponsored by the Garden City Chamber of Commerce. She held the news conference at 1:30 p.m., an hour and a half after the forum began.

“Bruce Blakeman will change Washington,” Coleman said. “Voters know where Bruce Blakeman stands.”

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