Arizona state Sen. Lori Klein (R), a gun-rights champion, keeps a loaded raspberry-pink handgun in her purse, and during an interview with Arizona Republic reporter Richard Ruelas, she took it out and pointed it at him.
“Oh, it’s so cute,” Klein said, before aiming the gun at Ruelas’s chest to show off the red beam of the laser sight. Klein’s gun, a .380 Ruger, has no safety, but the senator assured Ruelas that he wasn’t in danger.
“I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger,” she said.
Klein told the Arizona Republic that she owns a number of guns and has had “informal” training sessions on each of them, and that she was taught gun safety by her father.
Local gun activists have criticized Klein for pointing her gun at Ruelas, however.
Rob Mermelstein, the range master of the Phoenix Rod and Gun Club, told the Arizona Guardian, that Klein’s actions were “unconscionable.”
“Whoever would do something like that needs to have a better grounding in gun safety before ever laying a hand on a firearm,” he said.
The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) on January 8 has reignited the national debate over gun control. President Barack Obama called for stronger gun laws in the wake of the shooting, and HuffPost’s Sam Stein reported last week that the Obama administration is preparing to release a series of reforms in the near future.
