For California Senator Dianne Feinstein, the issue of gun control is not only political, but extremely personal.
Feinstein began her political years in San Francisco during the turbulent 1970s. As president of the city's Board of Supervisors, a radical leftist group even placed a bomb on her windowsill and shot out all of the windows in her home.
But one horrifying incident defines Feinstein's political views about gun control.
In 1978, Feinstein was the president of the San Francisco board of supervisors serving under her friend Mayor George Moscone.
On November 27, 1978, Feinstein found the dead bodies of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk, after they were murdered by former city supervisor Dan White, who had recently resigned.
Feinstein was in City Hall at the time, and saw White exit Moscone's office and enter Milk's office, without realizing that White had shot the Mayor five times, and then reloaded with hollow point bullets.
After White killed Milk and fled the scene, Feinstein ran into Milk's office and found his body.
When she checked for a pulse, her finger slipped into one of the five bullet wounds on Milk's body.
She personally identified both bodies for the police investigation.
Later that day, a visibly shaken Feinstein announced to the press that her friends and colleagues had been killed.
The trauma of the event turned Feinstein into one of the most vehement advocates of gun control when she ran for a seat in the Senate 14 years later.
Since then, Feinstein authored both the 1994 and 2013 assault weapons bans.
Here's Feinstein announcing the assassinations in 1978, starting at around 40 seconds in:
While the 1978 San Francisco murders have long faded into history, Feinstein brought up the incident earlier this year, during a verbal altercation with freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) after he quizzed her on the government's constitutional authority to regulate guns.
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): Let me just make a couple of points in response. One, I'm not a sixth grader. Senator, I've been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in, I saw people shot. I've looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I've seen the bullets that implode. In Sandy Hook, youngsters were dismembered.
Here's video of that altercation:
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