Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison Expresses Support For Gun Control

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) expressed her support for gun control on Sunday during CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The senator, who is normally firmly in the anti-gun control camp, likely had a change in perspective in light of the recent mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

The Huffington Post notes that Hutchison expressed a need for the government to ban large clips, saying:

“We ought to be looking at where the real danger is, like those large clips, I think that does need to be looked at. It’s the semi-automatics and those large magazines that can be fired off very quickly. You do have to pull the trigger each time, but it’s very quick.”

While she did appear to show an interest in new gun control legislation, Hutchison also advocated during the show for more armed police in schools. She stated, however, that decisions like that should be made at the local level, not by the federal government.

Hutchison’s comments edging toward gun control are surprising, considering that she sponsored a bill that would overturn D.C.’s handgun ban in 2007. She also has an A rating from the NRA. CBS News notes that Hutchison added, “We do have a ban on assault weapons, as was stated earlier.

Despite her apparent leaning toward gun control legislation, Kay Bailey Hutchison also echoed the NRA’s stance on the recent Sandy Hook school shooting by blaming increasingly violent undertones in US culture as being at least partially responsible for a spike in mass shootings. She added:

“What children and kids are seeing, even on P.G. movies, and these video games, like ‘Black Ops 2’ and those kinds of things — I mean really, we have a more violent society in general, and I think a lot of it has to be looked at in that framework.”

It is unclear if her comments on Sunday about gun control for large magazines will have any effect on Kay Bailey Hutchison’s rating with the NRA.