While Hillary Clinton has cunningly mislead Americans into believing she will not violate citizens’ constitutional right to bear arms, it’s no secret that she has made “gun violence prevention” a cornerstone of her presidential platform.
But — as with all promises made by politicians — the devil is in the details. So let’s dissect Clinton’s stated positions regarding the Second Amendment and translate into her real intentions, which by any measure will result in an attempt disarm the American public.
According to the Democrat nominee’s own website, she plans to enact the following gun control measures.
- Expand background checks to more gun sales—including by closing the gun show and internet sales loopholes—and strengthen the background check system by getting rid of the so-called “Charleston Loophole.”
- Take on the gun lobby by removing the industry’s sweeping legal protection for illegal and irresponsible actions (which makes it almost impossible for people to hold them accountable), and revoking licenses from dealers who break the law.
- Keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, other violent criminals, and the severely mentally ill by supporting laws that stop domestic abusers from buying and owning guns, making it a federal crime for someone to intentionally buy a gun for a person prohibited from owning one, and closing the loopholes that allow people suffering from severe mental illness to purchase and own guns. She will also support work to keep military-style weapons off our streets.
While the average person might think Clinton’s 2A platform sounds reasonable, when each point is evaluated on its merits, her arguments fall apart. Take a look at her first policy position.
The “gun show loophole” and the “Charleston Loophole” are fallacies perpetrated by the left to confuse the uninformed masses — particularly in the emotional aftermath of a mass shooting when calls for strict gun control measures supersede common sense and sympathies for the victims and their families. For example, the FBI, claimed Hillary, needed just one more day to prevent Dylann Roof of the tragic AME shooting in Charleston, S.C. from acquiring a weapon.
But FBI Director James Comey stomped on Hillary’s argument, stating that Roof’s abusive use of prescription medications remained unclear due to a clerical error and would not have been known for two months after his application was filed. There was no “loophole” — just a mistake made in the background check.
Regarding the so-called “gun show loophole,” dealers of firearms at gun shows must be federally licensed, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian organization. The law has been in effect since 1938.
“But if the voters learn the facts about gun shows, they will discover that there is no gun show loophole, no gun show crime problem and no reason to adopt federal legislation whose main effect would be to infringe on First and Second Amendment rights.”
Cato also states that “if a dealer sells a gun from a storefront, from a room in his home or from a table at a gun show, the rules are exactly the same: he can get authorization from the FBI for the sale only after the FBI runs its “instant” background check (which often takes days to complete). As a result, firearms are the most severely regulated consumer product in the United States — the only product for which FBI permission is required for every single sale.”
“Conversely, people who are not engaged in the business of selling firearms, but who sell firearms from time to time (such as a man who sells a hunting rifle to his brother-in-law), are not required to obtain the federal license required of gun dealers or to call the FBI before completing the sale.”
While anti-gun advocates claim that “25-50 percent of the vendors at most gun shows are unlicensed dealers,” that statistic only holds true if one counts vendors who aren’t selling guns — such as those selling books, clothing or accessories.
What other product is regulated like guns in America? Automobiles killed 38,300 people on U.S. roads in 2015, and roughly 4.4 million sustained injuries that resulted in medical consultations, according to the National Safety Council. By comparison, guns resulted in 33,636 deaths in the same year, 63% of which were suicides and the majority of the remainder of which was black on black violence, often involving illegal firearms. If cars kill more people than guns, why isn’t anyone calling for a bill to regulate granny’s ability to sell her car?
Before we delve into Hillary’s next plan — making gun manufacturers liable for the actions of criminals — listen to her squirmy non-answer regarding the constitutionality of Americans’ right to bear arms.