Well, Hillary Clinton probably got some laughs when she said that she supports the Second Amendment. No seriously, she said she’s a strong supporter of gun rights, which is probably one of her biggest flip-flops this cycle (other than calling the Trans-Pacific Partnership the “gold standard,” which she now opposes).
Well, first of all, I support the Second Amendment. I lived in Arkansas for 18 wonderful years. I represented upstate New York. I understand and respect the tradition of gun ownership. It goes back to the founding of our country.But I also believe that there can be and must be reasonable regulation. Because I support the Second Amendment doesn't mean that I want people who shouldn't have guns to be able to threaten you, kill you or members of your family.
And so when I think about what we need to do, we have 33,000 people a year who die from guns. I think we need comprehensive background checks, need to close the online loophole, close the gun show loophole. There's other matters that I think are sensible that are the kind of reforms that would make a difference that are not in any way conflicting with the Second Amendment.
You mentioned the Heller decision. And what I was saying that you referenced, Chris, was that I disagreed with the way the court applied the Second Amendment in that case, because what the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them. And the court didn't accept that reasonable regulation, but they've accepted many others. So I see no conflict between saving people's lives and defending the Second Amendment.
The Washington Free Beacon reported last October, that Clinton thought that the Heller decision was a mistake. The 2008 Heller decision was a landmark Second Amendment case that stated we have an individual right to own a firearm within a federal enclave. That right was expanded to the states in the 2010 McDonald v. Chicago case.
In June, Clinton refused to say that we have that individual right. Even Obama, who isn’t a friend of gun rights, admits that. It wasn’t until July that Clinton decided that she supports one of our nation’s oldest civil rights laws—and that she doesn’t want Heller to be overturned.
Again, any FFL dealer has to run a background check on all purchases, there is no federal carve out to bypass federal background check laws at gun shows, and the vast majority of the 33,000 lost are tragically lost to suicide. It’s not part of this absurd and inaccurate narrative the Left is trying to put forward that this nation has become a shooting gallery. Violent crime is down. Gun-related homicides have been cut in half since 1993. Also, as Stephen Gutowski pointed out, Heller was not at all related to child safety:
However, the major issue at stake in the Heller case was not safe storage of firearms to keep toddlers from getting access to them. As the Supreme Court described in the very first line of its opinion in the case, “District of Columbia law bans handgun possession by making it a crime to carry an unregistered firearm and prohibiting the registration of handguns.”
Still, to trust Hillary with anything, even running a lemonade stand, is a fool’s errand. When it comes to guns, she’s certainly not to be trusted, along with the rest of her party.