AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) used to be pretty pro-gun. She was a pro-gun Democrat, a rare breed to be sure.

Then she got into the United States Senate. Now that she’s running for president everything changed, and now she’s claiming she regrets her pro-gun past.

“I regret, actually, not caring about other communities,” Gillibrand said about her time in office. “My community didn’t have the gun violence that other parts of the state had, and in fact, the biggest issue for upstate New York was hunting rights.”

“My mother didn’t just cook the Thanksgiving turkey, she shot the Thanksgiving turkey, so I came from a different lens, but what I regret is I should have cared more about ending gun violence in other places and so the first thing I did when I became a senator was met with families who lost their loved ones to gun violence,” she continued.

“When you meet a mother or father who has lost a child to gun violence, there is no way you will ever not answer them directly and say I will do something to end gun violence, and that’s what I did.”

In other words, she’s blatantly admitting that emotion, not facts, drives her.

Shocking, I know.

Since taking office, Gillibrand has shifted more and more to the left politically, a shift that indicates she completely lacks principles. Instead, she follows whatever is trendy in the constituency so she can stay elected.

That’s not likely to play well with middle America, and pretending that gun control that has failed the inner cities should be pushed on rural communities is outright insane. After all, some places you have to wait for a long period before the police can arrive. Not through any maliciousness on the part of officers, or laziness, but that you have only a few officers–usually sheriff’s deputies–for an entire county. That creates a delay.

Why does that matter? Because when seconds count, help is at least a half-hour away.

Gillibrand and her fellow travelers would seek to impose inner-city failed solutions on the rest of the country, potentially resulting in numerous deaths that could have been prevented.

Not that she cares. Despite her rural roots, Gillibrand is more interested in winning hearts and minds in the big cities where people have been brainwashed to believe that gun control works. As such, she’s going to pander to them. Who cares what the rest of us do, right?

She’s pretty close to reaching the “let them eat cake” point.

Unfortunately, I doubt this will serve her particularly well. While anti-gunners feel emboldened following Parkland, they’re misunderstanding what modest gains they made in the midterms. As a result, they’re convinced going further left on guns is a winning strategy.

I have a feeling they’re going to find out very differently in 2020. I wonder what Gillibrand will do when she realizes her pandering was all for naught?

She can claim to be shifting back to pro-gun, but no one is going to believe her.