Gun violence issue more important than ever for Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein was settling into her office at San Francisco City Hall after a two-week vacation in the Himalayas. A former colleague passed by, but didn’t respond when she called out. She heard gun shots. And then silence.
The year was 1978, and Feinstein was president of the county board of supervisors. She was the first person to discover Supervisor Harvey Milk on the floor of his office.
“I could smell the gunpowder. Harvey was on his stomach,” Feinstein told the Times in an interview. “I tried to find a pulse. I put my finger in a bullet hole.”
A few hours later, she became the face of a national tragedy, announcing on a balcony of the the Beaux-arts City Hall that former supervisor Dan White had murdered Milk, one of the nation’s first openly gay elected officials, and Mayor George Moscone.
“I became mayor as the product of assassination,” Feinstein said.
The violent experience shaped her views and career. Now a U.S. senator, she is perhaps best known for her quest over 25 years in Congress to enact stricter national gun control, including authoring the now-expired original assault weapons ban.
“It’s an issue that has framed and really book-ended her career,” said Jerry Roberts, a former San Francisco Chronicle editor and author of “Dianne Feinstein: Never Let Them See You Cry.” “It definitely speaks to her perseverance and endurance, which are two of the strongest characteristics she has as a politician that have served her and really enabled her longevity.”
Gun control is rarely a top issue for California voters, but has new relevance this year as Feinstein, 84, seeks re-election. She has directly challenged President Donald Trump to support legislation banning bump stocks and assault-style weapons that enable mass killings such as what happened at a country music festival in Las Vegas last fall and at a high school in Parkland, Fla., this year. And Feinstein has tried to seize on the energy created by students in the aftermath of the the tragedy in Florida, pointing to the hundreds of thousands of young people who marched Saturday. She was among the speakers at the protest in San Francisco.