Dianne Feinstein, who made a good portion of her career pushing gun control as a U.S. Senator, has passed away at the age of 90. She had planned to retire in 2025 at the end of her term.
While we would never see eye to eye with Feinstein, many don’t know how she got started on her path to pushing gun control for decades. Here is some of that history from CNBC:
After two failed bids for mayor, she was elected president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1978, becoming the first woman to hold the title.
Feinstein was made acting mayor later that year, when then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, a colleague on the supervisors board, were assassinated by former board member Dan White.
In later interviews, Feinstein recalled finding Milk’s body and searching for a pulse by putting her finger in a bullet hole.
Feinstein was the first to announce the murders to the press. Her appointment a week later made her San Francisco’s first female mayor.
The trauma of the murders remained with her for decades.
“I never really talk about this,” Feinstein said with a sigh when asked about the killings during a 2017 CNN interview.
TTAG notes that Feinstein helped write the 1994 assault weapons ban, which was proven time and time again to be ineffective.
