
She used it against Republicans she ran against in previous campaigns. “ really tried hard to get that rating and to keep it. Candidates who once touted their NRA ties have found themselves on the defensive, or they have simply changed their positions with the times. And Democratic candidates, fueled by organizations such as Everytown for Gun Safety and an outpouring of grassroots energy and anger, are determined to put gun control on the ballot not just in November, but in 2018 primaries, too. Once home to a vocal minority of NRA-backed elected officials and reluctant to wade into the messy politics of gun rights, the Democratic caucus has taken an increasingly aggressive approach to gun control.

Kirkpatrick, once the model of a rural, pro-gun Democrat, is emblematic of the broader shift within the party. It’s time to fight the NRA directly.” Not long after, at a candidate forum near Tucson, Kirkpatrick announced her support for a new ban on assault weapons. “It’s time to fight the gun companies fighting against those reforms. “It’s not enough to fight for common-sense reforms anymore,” she tweeted. After last month’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Kirkpatrick ripped into the organization she once endorsed. Now, after an unsuccessful campaign for Senate in 2016, Kirkpatrick is a leading contender to win the Democratic nomination in the smaller and less rural 2nd Congressional District, and she’s singing a far different tune than she was a decade ago. When she ran for reelection one year later, she boasted of an A-rating from the NRA. “This is a chance for Arizonans to show our nation’s leaders we will not let them take away our freedoms.” Kirkpatrick walked the walk, too earlier that year she had written to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to shelve a proposal to reinstate the assault weapons ban. “I am proud that my state is hosting the group that has protected that right for 138 years,” she said in a statement. Ann Kirkpatrick, a first-term Democrat whose district covered an Illinois-sized swath of rural Arizona, welcomed its members with open arms.

When the National Rifle Association kicked off its annual conference in Phoenix in 2009, Rep.

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