The day before then-Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders voted to grant the gun industry immunity from legal liability, he voted against doing the same for fast-food companies and opposed doing the same for half a dozen other industries during his time in the House, roll call records show.
On Oct. 20, 2005, Sanders voted against the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, also known as the "cheeseburger bill," aimed at protecting McDonald's and other fast-food restaurant chains from lawsuits filed by plaintiffs who blamed the companies for causing obesity. The next day, he voted in favor of protecting gun manufacturers and sellers from lawsuits.
Hillary Clinton, the Vermont senator's chief opponent for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has criticized the latter vote for months, pointing to it as a sign of Sanders' weakness on gun control, along with five votes against the Brady Bill.
With the Democratic primary heating up in its final weeks and President Barack Obama taking new executive actions on guns, Clinton and her campaign ratcheted up the pressure on Sanders this week, arguing that he yielded to the gun industry where she stood firm.
"When it really mattered, Senator Sanders voted with the gun lobby, and I voted against the gun lobby," Clinton said of the immunity vote in a Friday interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews.
While he voted to protect the gun industry, Sanders's record shows him more aligned with the party's left wing in not granting immunity to fast food and several other industries. During his time in the House of Representatives, where he served for nine terms, he opposed bills that would have barred Americans from suing over Y2K computer failures, underperforming securities and machine tool manufacturers. He supported legislation allowing Americans to sue telemarketers, health insurers and dietary supplement makers.
The Sanders campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Clinton's campaign on Friday suggested that Sanders's vote on gun industry liability puts him at odds not only with her, but with Obama, who said in a New York Times op-ed on Thursday that he "will not campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common- sense gun reform." Clinton and Obama both voted against the Senate version of the bill that Sanders supported.
Clinton has jumped on the guns issue, in part, because it's one of the few areas where her record shows her consistently to the left of Sanders, who says his position and past votes simply reflect the reality of living in a mostly rural, low-crime state like Vermont, where hunting is a popular pastime.
The Sanders campaign also noted Friday that while Clinton is criticizing Sanders from the left on guns, she went at Obama from the right during the 2008 Democratic primary.