At a small private fundraiser in New York, Hillary Clinton slammed the Supreme Court and the National Rifle Association on Second Amendment issues, even going so far as to say that the Court is “wrong” regarding this provision in our bill of rights. Stephen Gutowski and Alanna Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon obtained the audio of this event:
“I was proud when my husband took [the National Rifle Association] on, and we were able to ban assault weapons, but he had to put a sunset on so 10 years later. Of course [President George W.] Bush wouldn’t agree to reinstate them,” said Clinton.“We’ve got to go after this,” Clinton continued. “And here again, the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.”
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“I’m going to speak out, I’m going to do everything I can to rally people against this pernicious, corrupting influence of the NRA and we’re going to do whatever we can,” she said.
Clinton argued that the NRA has “so intimidated elected members of Congress and other legislative bodies that these people are passing the most absurd laws.”
“The idea that you can have an open carry permit with an AK-47 over your shoulder walking up and down the aisles of a supermarket is just despicable,” she said.
Yet, when one says the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment, is the former first lady referring to the Heller case? The 2008 D.C. v Heller was a landmark case that said Americans have a constitutional right to own a handgun unrelated to service in a standing militia, but it only applied to federal enclaves. In 2010, McDonald v. Chicago expanded that right to the states.
I have no doubt that Clinton agrees with these views. I’m not so sure if she has the guts to pull it off. Yes, her husband did take on the NRA and it partially contributed to the 1994 Democratic wipeout. Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-OR) became the first sitting speaker since Galusha Grow to lose his re-election bid. Grow was booted … in 1862.
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Six years later, Democrats still didn’t get the picture. The story goes that Vice President Al Gore could have easily become President Gore if he hadn’t tried to “out-gun control” his Democratic rival, Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ), in the primaries; a completely unnecessary move since Bradley never polled within striking distance of Gore. The consequence of this was Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia going for Bush. If these three states had been etched into the Gore column, Florida wouldn’t have been an issue. Bush could have still won Florida, but Gore would have locked down more than enough electoral votes to win the presidency. Since then, the gun control movement has gone into the bunker.
All Clinton is doing is courting the most progressive elements of the Democratic base, which yearns for a candidate that will challenge the NRA and enact new gun control laws. In reality, Clinton rhetoric on SCOTUS being wrong on the Second Amendment, and her pledge to “make that case every chance I get,” is the definition of pie-in-the-sky. You need a functioning state-based Democratic political apparatus to place pressure on localities and state legislatures to change the guns laws, file lawsuits, and hope that the Supreme Court will hear arguments again on the Second Amendment. As it’s been reported before, state-based Democratic parties are all but finished in some states.
This underreported aspect of the Obama era includes the slow, bleeding death of these political operations, which have entered such a state of decrepitude in some areas that Clinton has vowed to rebuild those structures if she’s elected president. With no strong Democratic leaders at the local level, no anti-gun voices in the state legislatures, which have become more Republican since 2008, Hillary’s crusade to reverse landmark gun rights cases on the Supreme Court seems to be nothing more than slogans for fundraising. Moreover, on the legal front, those who are for Second Amendment freedom appear to be on a winning streak, winning cases in California and Illinois that either expand gun rights, or prevent governing bodies from curtailing them.
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