You Won’t Believe What Hillary Said about Gun Supporters 2 Comments Hillary-Clinton-at-senate-015
Liberals in favor of greater gun control are pinning their hopes on Hillary Clinton and a Democratic win in 2016. Clinton is the acknowledged front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and she has long advocated expanding background checks and banning assault weapons. The question is, even if she is elected, can she push the anti-gun agenda into law?
Last summer, at a CNN town hall event, Clinton attacked Second Amendment supporters by saying:
We cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people, hold a view point that terrorizes the majority of people.
Writing in the National Review, Charles C. Cooke says:
The remark was music to the ears of gun-control groups, who want her to bring that same rhetoric to the campaign trail. I should perhaps start by stating the obvious: Hillary Clinton would be smart to ignore these groups. As her own husband knows all too well, gun control is a touchy subject, and it is increasingly a political loser. Per Pew, Americans are more strongly in favor of gun rights than they have been for decades. Presumably, she does not want to be Al Gore.
That to one side, what really jumped out at me was this line: “Gun-control advocates have high hopes for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, viewing her as an ally who can finish the push for tightened background checks that has stalled in President Obama’s second term.”
One has to ask “why?” The primary federal problem for the gun control movement of late has not been President Obama, it has been Congress. After Sandy Hook, Obama fought extremely hard for the failed Toomey-Manchin bill, which would have imposed background checks on all private sales, and he signaled his willingness to sign a new “assault weapons” ban and/or to agree to a federal limit on the size of magazines. Sadly for him, he never got that chance. Why? Well, because the relatively pro-gun Harry Reid blocked everything but background checks, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate refused flatly to acquiesce even to that. (Had they done so, moreover, the measure would have been dead on arrival in the House.)
Congress has since become even more heavily Republican and conservative. Hillary may be elected president, but she will likely face the same challenges as Obama.
Despite the efforts of the anti-gun lobby, American citizens continue to elect representatives who resist any legislation that would erode their Second Amendment rights.