'Annie Oakley' changes her tune

By: Mike Allen
The Politico
April 14, 2008 05:05 PM EST

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who has cast herself in the past few days as a champion of gun owners, had a very different message when she spoke eight years ago to the Newspaper Association of America.

“CLINTON TAKES AIM AT GUNS,” said the all-caps headline on the group’s Web site after she told members in May 2000, during her Senate campaign, that “there isn’t a more important task” than passing gun-safety laws.

On Tuesday, she'll speak to a luncheon meeting of the same group — with a very different message.

Over the weekend, Clinton sought to capitalize on remarks Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made about gun owners by casting herself as a Second American champion and reminiscing about how “my dad …. taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl.”

Shooting, she said Saturday, is “part of the culture … part of a way of life” in some rural areas of Pennsylvania, which hold its primary a week from Tuesday.

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