“It was a war zone.”
Retired US Marine Gunnery sergeant Jessie Jane Duff mocked a Democratic candidate’s handling of a weapon in a political advertisement last Wednesday.
Talking on NRA TV, Duff, who had served in the military for 20 years, mocked Maura Sullivan, herself a veteran, for holding a rifle too “daintily.”
Sullivan, formerly the assistant Veterans Affairs secretary under President Barack Obama and currently a contender for a New Hampshire First Congressional District, released an ad calling for a increased gun control in her state. In it, she’s seen presenting an AR-15 to the camera.
“This is a weapon similar to the one I trained on in the Marines, and carried in Fallujah, Iraq,” she says. “It was a war zone. No child should face one of these in a classroom in New Hampshire.”
Duff took issue with both her policy prescription and her presentation.
“She’s an embarrassment,” Duff said on NRA TV Wednesday. “And I can say that because I am a Marine. When you stand on TV holding a weapon so daintily…ugh!”
“As a Marine watching that ad, I had to cringe,” Duff added. “She might as well have said ‘Oooh, it looks scary!’”
Duff found Sullivan’s comments in the ad to be distasteful.
“What I see (in the ad) is a person who only supports the Constitution when she’s in uniform, but when it comes off, all that goes away,” Duff said. “To me that’s the most dishonest argument any veteran can make. To say what she said, in my opinion, is completely abhorrent.”