Harris-Perry looked at Holder and said, “You once said the worst day in office was the day that you had to walk through the bloodied aftermath” following the heinous attack on Sandy Hook Elementary. She said, “Children were slaughtered in their classrooms and we have not made any meaningful progress on changing the access to guns in this country. Are we a nation of cowards when it comes to guns?”
Holder responded:
Well, I’ll say this, [walking through the school] was the worst day I had as Attorney General. It is, I think the single failure that I point to in my time as Attorney General, that I was not able to… convince Congress to really follow the will of the American people — which was to enact meaningful, reasonable, gun safety measures. The gun lobby simply won.Holder went to say he does not believe America is a “nation of cowards,” but he does believe “members of Congress need to have a little more backbone and stand up to what is a distinct minority, even within… the NRA.”