In response to presidential candidate Donald Trump's NRA speech on Friday, the too-clever-by-half Clinton campaign produced an admittedly confused "Venn diagram" suggesting that Americans hate guns, now comes "Politifact" to "inform" us that, in the opinion of the leftist media, Hillary Clinton would not "abolish" the Second Amendment.
Don't believe that.
For the record, I had my own little encounter with Politifact in October, 2009, when they tried to "disprove" our assertion that Obamacare had anti-gun implications. After I argued them into a corner over the telephone, the Politifact editor, at the last minute, changed the subject of the "inquiry" -- I assume, in order to avoid conceding that the "gun lobby" had a valid point. We didn't bother attacking them at the time because we knew Harry Reid's manager's amendment to Obamacare would have extensive language taking care of the "non-existent" gun problem.
As in 2009, however, "fact-checker" reporters who know no more about gun law than the Bloomberg organization have gotten it wrong.
The dissent in D.C. v. Heller, joined by two of the sitting liberals of the Supreme Court, was
specifically around the question of whether the Second Amendment was nothing more than the right of a state to set up a militia. If this becomes the view of the court, then, as far as the judiciary is concerned, the Second Amendment confers no rights on individuals at all.
According to Stevens' dissent, individuals could probably technically bring a lawsuit, but only to enforce the state's "militia" rights.
Since then, both Sotomayor and Kagan (the former in a dissent; the latter in a speech) have made it clear that they want Heller to be reconsidered and overturned.
Therefore, if Hillary is elected, there is a grave danger the Second Amendment will
evaporate. The only reservation is if the GOP holds the Senate, the 60-vote filibuster
survives, and Republican senators show unprecedented backbone.
What about the argument (made by Clinton's people) that they only want to "modify"
Heller to allow "reasonable, common sense" gun control, and that her exclusive agenda is universal background checks and no-fly legislation?
On page 54 of Heller, Scalia includes squishy mush (apparently at the behest of Kennedy) that allows states to do pretty much whatever they want as it is. Even New York's fascist "SAFE" law, with a small exception, was ruled constitutional after the Heller decision.
So when Clinton blasts the "gun culture," says Obama didn't go far enough, talks about
adopting Australia's gun confiscation, and wants to sue manufacturers out-of-business, then, no, she is not proposing anything short of a total ban on firearms.
And when a "moderate" Democrat nominee like Merrick Garland votes to reconsider Heller, what is at stake is whether the government recognizes that the Constitution conveys any individual gun rights at all.
Let's forget, for a moment, Clinton's adoring rhetoric about Australia's gun confiscation and about obliterating the "gun culture." The explicit gun proposals which she endorses expressly -- possibly by illegal executive action rubber-stamped by puppet judges -- are more than enough to ban most guns.
Start with her idea for banning guns for anyone the president chooses to put on a secret list -- a list which has no standards for getting onto it and no due process for getting off.
The sycophantic press bills this as an "anti-terror measure." But think about it: Ted Kennedy used to be on that list. And there is nothing to keep an anti-gun president from putting every American onto it. And, p.s., if the president can take away one constitutional right by fiat, using this device, what would prevent him from taking away all of your constitutional rights the same way? Surely, the Orwellian ramifications of this would be clearer if American liberalism weren't such a brain-dead echo chamber.
Or the Clinton/Obama idea to prohibit you from giving a gun to your son without the government's permission?
Anyone who thinks this is a good idea might want to consider that 8 percent of all gun transactions are blocked by the Brady Check system. And that 95 percent of these are "false positives." And that the Justice Department, in violation of three federal laws -- two of which I drafted -- is now refusing to fund procedures to process ANY appeals by persons illegally denied their rights under this process. If a president shut down the liberal media, and refused to fund court appeals by the press, it would be analogous to this.
Finally, Hillary wants to return to the bad-old-days when leftist jurisdictions used taxpayer money to bring frivolous lawsuits to sue gun manufacturers out of business. When this tort law was passed, I warned that it contained an unnecessary loophole to allow suits for "negligent entrustment." But its repeal is clearly intended to bring gun ownership to an end by bringing gun manufacturing and sales to an end.
So now that Bernie has been dispatched, Clinton apparently thinks the "lie du jour" will be to tack to the right again on Second Amendment issues. But history teaches us that anything short of the European model of total confiscation is just an intermediate step.
And, frankly, no gun owner in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, or Colorado believes her cackles to the contrary.