by Alan Gottlieb
When Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton openly declared war on the so-called “gun lobby” in 2015 as a cornerstone of her White House campaign, she was essentially telling tens of millions of honest American citizens that she considered their fundamental right to keep and bear arms to be a government-regulated privilege.
At a private fund raiser last October, she was recorded telling people that, in her opinion, the Supreme Court was wrong on the Second Amendment in its landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller.
And now she is at the head of a political party that has adopted a platform plank that does not celebrate or even defend the Second Amendment, but instead proposes to erode it while giving it lip service. That says not only everything gun owners need to know about Clinton, but also about the party she represents.
Here’s what the Democrats have adopted, under the heading “Preventing Gun Violence”:
“With 33,000 Americans dying every year, Democrats believe that we must finally take sensible action to address gun violence. While responsible gun ownership is part of the fabric of many communities, too many families in America have suffered from gun violence. We can respect the rights of responsible gun owners while keeping our communities safe. 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 (LCAM’s)—off our streets. We will fight back against attempts to make it harder for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to revoke federal licenses from law breaking gun dealers, and ensure guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists, intimate partner abusers, other violent criminals, and those with severe mental health issues. There is insufficient research on effective gun prevention policies, which is why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must have the resources it needs to study gun violence as a public health issue.”
Contrast the Democrat plank on guns with that of the Republican Party adopted a week earlier. The GOP platform talks about upholding the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, and about how that right is natural and inalienable, and predates the Constitution. It is secured by the Second Amendment, not created or granted by it, according to Republicans.
The GOP platform reads more like an affirmation of liberty and freedom, rather than a diagnosis of a virulent disease:
“We uphold the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, a natural inalienable right that predates the Constitution and is secured by the Second Amendment. Lawful gun ownership enables Americans to exercise their God-given right of self-defense for the safety of their homes, their loved ones, and their communities.
“We salute the Republican Congress for defending the right to keep and bear arms by preventing the President from installing a new liberal majority on the Supreme Court. The confirmation to the Court of additional anti-gun justices would eviscerate the Second Amendment’s fundamental protections. Already, local officials in the nation’s capital and elsewhere are defying the Court’s decisions upholding an individual right to bear arms as affirmed by the Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald. We support firearm reciprocity legislation to recognize the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms to protect themselves and their families in all 50 states. We support constitutional carry statutes and salute the states that have passed them. We oppose ill-conceived laws that would restrict magazine capacity or ban the sale of the most popular and common modern rifle. We also oppose any effort to deprive individuals of their right to keep and bear arms without due process of law.
“We condemn frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers and the current Administration’s illegal harassment of firearm dealers. We oppose federal licensing or registration of law-abiding gun owners, registration of ammunition, and restoration of the ill-fated Clinton gun ban. We call for a thorough investigation — by a new Republican administration — of the deadly “Fast and Furious” operation perpetrated by Department of Justice officials who approved and allowed illegal sales of guns to known violent criminals.”
Through decades of political evolution, Democrats have become known as “the party of gun control.” Find a piece of anti-gun-rights legislation at the federal, state and even local level, and you will also find the political DNA and fingerprints of a Democrat politician.
Worse still, the gun prohibition lobby – it really is about banning the private ownership of firearms regardless what they say for public consumption – gets cover from a national media that has even adopted their deceptive vocabulary. No longer is this anti-rights lobby identified as a “gun control” movement, but instead they are routinely labeled “gun safety” or “gun reform” activists by the press. At best, that amounts to deceptive advertising.
Reporters and editorial writers talk about “gun violence” as though that is different from violence involving knifes, blunt objects or fists and feet. They allow gun prohibitionists to go unchallenged when talking about the “33,000 lives lost annually to gun violence,” when it is widely known that two thirds of those fatalities are suicides. But the gun ban lobby gets away with lumping all of the statistics together, thus creating a deliberately dishonest impression that all of these deaths are the result of criminal misuse of firearms.
It should be noted for the record that in Washington State, the Legislature passed a new suicide prevention program that was championed by the Second Amendment Foundation and the National Rifle Association, in cooperation with suicide prevention specialists and a courageous Democrat state lawmaker. Gun control advocates had little to no involvement in the nearly-year-long process that led to drafting the bill and shepherding it through the legislative process.
When the press forgets that the Second Amendment is part of a Bill of Rights that is an all-or-nothing package, instead of a civil rights buffet from which we pick and choose only those rights we like, the nation is in trouble. The First, Fourth, Fifth or Sixth amendments are just as fragile as the Second. Once a right is surrendered, we’ll never get it back.
Second Amendment activists understand that, perhaps better than anyone. Gun owners are not simply wary of a Clinton presidency; they are alarmed by how their rights have already been treated, and how they might be further restricted. A “President Clinton” nominates Supreme Court justices and federal court judges, and that could create a legacy stretching decades that undermines, through liberal court interpretation, the Second Amendment and the individual rights foundation upon which it is based.
When Democrats in various states initially pushed for registration of so-called “assault weapons” years ago, gun owner concerns were dismissed as paranoia. Liberals laughed when Second Amendment advocates warned that registration leads to confiscation, or at the very least, prohibition.
Now in California, for example, these firearms have been banned after years of incrementally tougher restrictions. Even a San Francisco police officer was charged recently for allegedly having an illegal “assault weapon.”
Likewise, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, recently confirmed what Second Amendment advocates have been saying all along, that anti-gunners really do want to ban firearms. She announced a new, strict approach to defining an “assault weapon” that bans firearms with similar features.
When Hillary Clinton declares that the Supreme Court was “wrong on the Second Amendment,” it is not paranoia but experience that alarms the firearms community. In her acceptance speech, candidate Clinton insisted that, “I’m not here to repeal the Second Amendment. I’m not here to take away your guns.”
After what FBI Director James Comey revealed about Clinton’s veracity regarding her emails, should any gun owner believe her for so much as a heartbeat? Her honesty and trustworthiness are doubted by two out of three voters, according to a recent CBS News poll.
Of course, the battle over firearm civil rights isn’t just about Clinton and her political party’s hostility toward guns and the people who own them. There are much broader issues at stake, such as personal security and public safety, and for too long, the nation’s gun owners have been used as whipping boys for crimes they didn’t commit, and now for the acts of domestic terrorists who would love nothing better than to see American citizens unilaterally disarmed.
In the wake of Orlando and San Bernardino, the same people encouraging Americans to be tolerant have shown only intolerance toward guns and gun owners. Instead of blaming Islamic extremism, it’s the firearm that gets targeted. After the attack in Nice that left 84 people, including three American citizens dead, has anyone clamored for restrictions on large panel trucks? Certainly not. But after Orlando, where a self-identified terrorist opened fire, killing 49 people, anti-gunners used this as a launchpad for new attacks on gun ownership.
Recently, two gun prohibition lobbying organizations in the Pacific Northwest – Washington Ceasefire and Ceasefire Oregon – launched a campaign to ban so-called “assault weapons” in their respective states. These and similar organizations around the country have exploited tragedy and terrorist atrocity to press their gun ban agenda, and for the first time they are being honest about it.
When asked about the timing of this gun ban effort, Washington Ceasefire President Ralph Fascitelli told the Seattle Times, “The truth is, everybody in the gun-safety movement has to be an opportunist.”
Or, as anti-gun Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel infamously once observed, “You never want a serious crisis go to waste.”
But is there really a “serious crisis” regarding firearms, and particularly with the semi-automatic modern sporting rifle, in the United States? Let’s look at some facts.
In mid-June, the Wall Street Journal correctly noted that “the percentage of murders committed with rifles today (2% in 2014) is less than the 3% in the last year of the ban.” That is easily confirmed by checking the FBI Uniform Crime reports for the three most recent years available, 2012 through 2014. According to the data, rifles of any kind are involved in a fraction of homicides, and account for far fewer criminal fatalities than knives, fists or blunt instruments.
In 2014, rifles were used in 248 of the 11,961 homicides. In 2013, according to the FBI statistics, 285 rifles were used in the 12,253 reported homicides. In 2012, rifles were used in only 322 of the 12,765 homicides.
During those same years, again according to the FBI, 1,567 people were murdered with knives or other cutting instruments in 2014 and 435 were killed with blunt instruments. In 2013 there were 1,490 people slain with knives and other sharp objects and another 428 were beaten to death. Back in 2012, the FBI data says 1,589 people were stabbed or slashed to death and 518 more were bludgeoned. Where is the demand for restrictions on knives, axes, hatchets, machetes or swords, hammers, baseball bats and crowbars?
The number of homicides nationally has declined over the past several years. During that same period, the number of firearms owned by private citizens has increased. A recent report from the Crime Prevention Research Center estimated that there are now more than 14.5 million citizens licensed to carry in the United States. That represents a 215 percent increase since 2007, the Center said.
Granted, there are some troubling statistics, in places like Chicago, Washington D.C. and Baltimore. In those cities, which have very strict gun laws, murder and mayhem have increased. It should be noted that those cities all have long-standing liberal administrations. If we must point fingers of blame, those administrations should at least share the burden.
And there is one other thing. Law enforcement overwhelmingly supports an armed citizenry. According to the 28th annual national survey of command staff law enforcement professionals National Association of Chiefs of Police (NACOP) published recently, 87.9 percent of respondents believe that “any vetted citizen” should be able to purchase a firearm for sport or self-defense, and 86.4 percent support “nationwide recognition of state issued concealed weapon permits.” Seventy-six percent of the respondents believe law-abiding armed citizens can help law enforcement reduce criminal activity.
This survey was sent to 17,600 departments across the country, and more than 1,000 law enforcement professionals responded. National polling organizations routinely publish survey results based on approximately the same number of responses.
Additionally, a 2013 survey of thousands of law enforcement officers and command staff by PoliceOne.com revealed that 71 percent of the 14,642 respondents said a federal ban on the manufacture and sale of firearms dubbed “assault weapons” would have no impact on reducing violent crime. More than 95 percent said a ban on the manufacture and sale of magazines holding more than 10 cartridges would have no effect on reducing violent crime. And 70 percent opposed the creation of a national database to track all legal gun sales.
It is disappointing that much of this information never seems to make it into the “mainstream.” It is even more disappointing that one political party would make the erosion of a constitutionally-delineated civil right as a major plank of its 2016 campaign platform.
And yet, the national media and the Democratic Party wonder why gun owners and gun rights organizations neither trust the press or the party.
Gottlieb is founder and Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Foundation, and publisher of TheGunMag.com. He also serves as chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
