Former New York Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, a devoted gun prohibitionist who once admitted during an interview she didn’t know what a barrel shroud is, but she wanted it banned, has died. She was 81.
As noted by WQOW News and the Associated Press, McCarthy ran for congress on a gun control platform after her husband was murdered and her son was severely wounded on a New York commuter train. The incident was known as the Long Island Rail Road massacre. She was elected in 1996 and became one of Capitol Hill’s most devoted gun control crusaders.
However, like other gun control proponents, her actual knowledge of firearms appeared to be limited. In an infamous interview with Tucker Carlson on MSNBC in 2007, when asked what a barrel shroud—one of the things on a so-called “assault weapons” she wanted banned—McCarthy repeatedly tried to dodge the question until she was cornered into admitting, “I actually don’t know what a barrel shroud is. I think it’s a shoulder thing that goes up.”
McCarthy served until 2014, having been elected to nine terms. She announced in June 2013 that she was being treated for lung cancer, and in January 2014, she announced she would not run for re-election that year. She left Congress in January 2015. According to Wikipedia, she was succeeded by Democrat Kathleen Rice.
