EXCERPTS FROM "MY
LIFE" BY BILL CLINTON:
"Just
before the House vote (on the crime bill), Speaker Tom Foley and majority
leader Dick Gephardt had made a last-ditch appeal to me to remove the assault
weapons ban from the bill. They argued that many Democrats who represented
closely divided districts had already . . . defied the NRA once on the Brady bill
vote. They said that if we made them walk the plank again on the assault
weapons ban, the overall bill might not pass, and that
if it did, many Democrats who voted for it would not survive the election in
November. Jack Brooks, the House Judiciary Committee chairman from
"On
November 8, we got the living daylights beat out of us, losing eight Senate
races and fifty-four House seats, the largest defeat for our party since 1946.
. . . The NRA had a great night. They beat both
Speaker Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, two of the ablest members of Congress, who
had warned me this would happen. Foley was the first Speaker to be defeated in
more than a century. Jack Brooks had supported the NRA for years and had led
the fight against the assault weapons ban in the House, but as chairman of the
Judiciary Committee he had voted for the overall crime bill even after the ban
was put into it. The NRA was an unforgiving master: one strike and you're out.
The gun lobby claimed to have defeated nineteen of the twenty-four members on
its hit list. They did at least that much damage . . ." (Pages 629-630)
"After
the election I had to face the fact that . . . supporters of responsible gun
legislation . . . simply could not protect their friends in Congress from the
NRA. The gun lobby outspent, outorganized,
outfought, and outdemagogued them." (Page 630)
"One
Saturday morning, I went to a diner in
Several of them nodded in agreement." (Page 699)
"I had
grown up in the hunting culture in which its influence was greatest and had
seen the devastating impact the NRA had had on the '94 congressional
elections." (Page 898)