It is one thing to suspect what a politician might do to your rights as he or she avoids straight and candid answers. It is quite another thing when a politician actually tells you what they intend to do with your freedom.
Hillary Clinton has said a lot. Although she is now trying to deny some of what she said in the primaries and before, as she has now transformed into a general-election candidate for president, her words defining her positions on the Second Amendment are still out there.
At a town hall meeting in Keene, N.H., an audience member said Australia “managed to … take away … millions of handguns, and in one year, they were all gone.” He then asked Clinton, “Can we do that?”
Clinton said the U.K. is also “a good example” of what a country should do after a “mass killing.”
“The Australian example,” she said, “that was a buyback program.” She said the Australian government “offered a good price” for “buying hundreds of thousands of guns, and then they basically clamped down going forward …”
As for America, Clinton said, “I think it would be worth considering doing it on the national level if that could be arranged.” Australia, of course, didn’t do a simple gun buyback. Australian gun owners had no choice. While they were compensated, it was either turn in guns for the government’s price or face hard time in prison. Clinton knows that such a mandatory gun confiscation isn’t politically feasible just now, but she seems to be calculating incremental steps that would eventually get America to where the U.K. and Australia are now.
Actually, Clinton has said so much about Second Amendment rights that it’s easy to forget just how extreme another Clinton administration would be. Here are five more things (see the first five here) she would do to your freedom if she wins in November.It is quite another thing when a politician actually tells you what they intend to do with your freedom.
Crush The “Permitless” Carry Movement
Eleven states now have some form of “permitless” (also called “constitutional”) carry, meaning law-abiding citizens don’t have to pass tests, do paperwork, or get fingerprinted and photographed in order to get a state-mandated permission slip to carry a handgun concealed. Clinton is opposed to this recognition of freedom. She once said, “I stand in support of … common-sense legislation to license everyone who wishes to purchase a gun. I also believe that every new handgun sale or transfer should be registered in a national registry, such as Chuck (Schumer) is proposing.”
Delay Gun Sales Indefinitely
Clinton says she wants to fix the so-called “Charleston loophole.” This nonexistent “loophole” refers to a murderer in Charleston, S.C., who purchased a firearm in a gun store. His name was called into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), but the FBI didn’t know of any reason to deny the sale. According to current law, if the FBI does not notify the dealer within three days, the sale can proceed. In this case, the sale to the murderer should have been denied, but due to a clerical error by a county jail clerk who reported his arrest to the wrong agency, he was allowed to purchase the gun. In other words, the bureaucracy failed, but instead of cleaning up the bureaucracy and demanding accountability of our public officials, Clinton blames law-abiding gun owners. Consequently, she wants no limit on the amount of time a sale can be delayed, making it possible to simply shut off all gun sales if an administration decided to indefinitely delay all sales. In truth, she doesn’t want to force the government to promptly act on our rights; she wants to give the state all the power over us it wants to wield.
Push Her “Guns Don’t Make Us Safer” Agenda
She doesn’t want to force the government to promptly act on our rights; she wants to give the state all the power over us it wants to wield.Clinton has said, “We lose 33,000 people a year already to gun violence, arming more people to do what I think is not the appropriate response to terrorism. The first line of defense against radicalization is in the Muslim-American community.” A lot of fact-checkers have noted that about two-thirds of the 33,000 “gun violence” losses she cites are actually suicides. Some other portion is comprised of police officers or legal gun owners who had to use their firearms in self-defense. Aside from her disingenuous statistic, her claim that a good guy (or gal) with a gun can’t stop a bad guy is utter nonsense. Clinton has armed security, making her effectively a walking, talking contradiction to this position.
Use Executive Actions To Further Restrict Rights
Clinton has said, “I will push hard to get more sensible restraints. I want to work with Congress, but I will also look at ways as president.” President Barack Obama has issued many executive actions that impact gun rights; Clinton is clearly saying she would do the same, and likely more.
Pack The U.S. Supreme Court Against Gun Owners
At the Democratic National Convention in July, Clinton said, “I’m not here to repeal the Second Amendment. I’m not here to take away your guns.” She wants us to believe this even though she has said that the Supreme Court got it “wrong” in 2008 when it ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to have a firearm in the home for self-defense. If Clinton is able to pack the court with justices who believe our Second Amendment doesn’t say what it means and mean what it says, then we’ll lose the basis for our right to bear arms. If that happens, gun bans and other restrictions could both pass and stand up in courts throughout America.
