As the presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton winds its way into its final months, Trump has raised an important issue that all conservatives who are gun owners must consider: Clinton has made no secret of her desire to degrade or even eliminate the legality of many firearms.
Despite the fact that Clinton is a graduate of Yale Law School and that as a former Senator and Secretary of State, she should be one of the prime protectors and defenders of the U.S. Constitution, which enshrines citizens’ right to bear arms in its Second Amendment, Clinton has in the past said that the right to bear arms may be hypothetical.
“If it is a Constitutional right, then it — like every other Constitutional right — is subject to reasonable regulations,” said the candidate when interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” this summer.
“Responsible gun owners have a right. I have no objection to that. But the rest of the American public has a right to require certain kinds of regulatory, responsible actions to protect everyone else.”
Clinton deferred twice when she was directly asked if she agreed with the Supreme Court’s strict interpretation of the Second Amendment, as opined by former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.
Historically, both Hillary and Bill Clinton have favored both gun control legislation and gun control lobbying efforts. In 1993, as First Lady, Hillary Clinton went on record as saying she supported an additional 25 percent tax on all gun sales.
In 2000, as president, Bill Clinton forced gun maker Smith & Wesson to submit to design changes in their manufacturing methods and to limit their dealer distribution networks under a landmark agreement with the U.S. government.
During July’s Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton’s party accepted into its platform a plank that read, “To build on the success of the lifesaving Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, we will expand and strengthen background checks and close dangerous loopholes in our current laws; repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) to revoke the dangerous legal immunity protections gun makers and sellers now enjoy; and keep weapons of war — such as assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines — off our streets.”
However, fact-checking shows that the gun show ‘loopholes’ to which the language refers are not in fact extant and that most shootings in America happen without the use of high-capacity magazines or so-called “assault weapons.”
But the pledge to repeal the PLCAA is the measure that should give gun owners the most fear because, if taken to extremes, this could have the effect of causing every major gun manufacturer and dealer to go out of business.
The PLCAA was enacted specifically to protect gun dealers and makers from being sued if someone uses one of their products to commit a crime, the same way that Ford Motor Company is protected if one of their cars is used in a hit-and-run accident.
Repealing the PLCAA would have a chilling effect on the ability of average Americans to buy a gun in the future due to the lack of liability protection. Imagine if every gun dealer were forced to go out of business because they couldn’t afford to take the risk of being sued if someone decided to use one of their guns in a crime.
The Democrats know that allowing states to sue gun manufacturers will lead to the makers’ “death by a thousand cuts,” as the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, put it in 1998 when he was Secretary of Housing under President Bill Clinton. Former Governor Eliot Spitzer said that manufacturers that were cavalier about such concerns would have bankruptcy attorneys “knocking at [their] door.”
Hillary Clinton herself has vowed to repeal the PLCAA if she is elected. She raised eyebrows when she claimed gun manufacturers “are the only business in America that is wholly protected from any kind of liability. They can sell a gun to someone they know they shouldn’t, and they won’t be sued. There will be no consequences.”
However, in stating this, Clinton is wrong on two counts — first, that other businesses and manufacturers enjoy similar legal protections and second, that gun dealers and manufacturers still face many liabilities and potential lawsuits for all kinds of reasons.
There are some Democrats who believe their party should go even further and simply outlaw guns entirely. Democratic National Committee member Bonnie Schaefer, who’s a supporter of Clinton, said at a meeting in Washington, D.C. recently that she doesn’t believe “anyone should have a gun… Nothing is ever solved when you have a gun in your hand except the worst possible scenario.”
One wonders what Schaefer would do when confronted in a dead-end alley at night by a potential rapist or murderer. Perhaps she could fight them off with legislation.
Democrats often say they favor increased background checks for gun buyers. But they forget that killers Omar Mateen in Florida, James Holmes in Colorado and Jared Lee Loughner in Arizona all passed background checks before their shooting sprees. Universal background checks in California failed to prevent the massacres in San Bernardino and at UCLA there last year and earlier this year, respectively.
And finally, despite numerous high-profile incidents splashed on local newscasts, gun homicides in America have actually decreased by 50 percent in the last 20 years. Looking at the mainstream media, however, you’d never know it.
What’s clear is that Democrats need to face facts: guns are not the cause of the crime; they are neutral inanimate objects that present no danger to anyone until someone makes the decision to pick one up.
That Hillary Clinton appears to disregard the obvious meaning of the Constitution is cause for acute concern, especially in light of the fact that the next president is likely to nominate as many as four new justices of the Supreme Court — justices whose appointments carry a life term. It is critical that conservatives redouble efforts to defeat her in November.
~American Liberty Report
