Can Kentucky Trust Senate Candidate Grimes On Guns?

How does that old saying go?

You can fool some people all of the time.

You can fool all people some of the time.

But you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time.

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Alison Lundergan Grimes likes to portray herself as a supporter of gun rights… to voters. She has a different story to tell the liberal news media.

Kentucky Democrat Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes has made quite the show of being a Second Amendment supporter in hopes of wooing some support from gun owners in conservative Kentucky, but  campaign memos designed to help Grimes prep for interviews with news media in the state show that she is actually in favor of passing more pointless gun control laws.

One heading in the memo, labeled “GUN COMMERICAL – DISAGREE WITH PRESIDENT ON GUNS,” directs Grimes to say she disagrees with Obama on gun control. “We shouldn’t be banning guns based on things like their grips as a bill supported by Obama tried to do,” reads one bullet point. The heading refers to a TV ad Grimes released last month, which shows the Democrat shooting clay pigeons in a field while her voiceover rebuts charges from her Republican opponent, Sen. Mitch McConnell. “I’m not Barack Obama,” Grimes says, lowering her shotgun and turning toward the camera. “I disagree with him on guns, coal, and the EPA.”

But at the editorial board meeting, Grimes is encouraged—”ONLY IF PUSHED,” the memo insists—to scale back the red-meat rhetoric. She’s directed to concede that guns should be kept out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill and that she believes in “strengthening our background check system” and “putting more money into education” on gun safety. The memo for the meeting with the Enquirer staff uses the exact same language on guns. There is an additional heading on the issue of “closing the gun show loophole,” though there appear to be no talking points about that topic.

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Grimes seems to be content to say one thing and do another, reminding us of someone else who wasn't honest about his position on firearms.
Grimes seems to be content to say one thing and do another, reminding us of someone else who wasn’t honest about his position on firearms.

In other words, the Grimes campaign is telling the liberal news media in Kentucky one thing in order to win their endorsements, while telling Kentucky’s voters another thing in order to convince them to vote for her.

So which is the real Alison Lundergan Grimes?

Frankly, the only way Kentucky voters are going to know is if they send her to Washington and see how she votes.

Can voters afford to take that chance?

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