by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
One of those drivers whose reckless behavior makes you wonder where the police are when someone drives foolishly passed my car the other day. Noticeable besides the lack of driver courtesy and good sense was a “Hillary 2016” bumper sticker.
Perhaps the bumper sticker was a further reflection of that driver’s good judgment, but it was also a reminder that the next presidential election is less than three years away. But, before you say “Good grief, we just had a presidential election,” bear in mind that to most politicians the next election cycle starts hours after the ballots are counted for the last one. Politicians are always running! And so is the coterie of fund-raising rainmakers and campaign workers.
Now, while Hillary Clinton hasn’t said whether or not she will try for the presidency again, there are loads of people, like the reckless driver, just itching to hop on her bandwagon. Maybe they are some of the same people who pushed her candidacy in 2008, when she lost to Barack Obama.
Hillary Clinton isn’t the only “progressive” woman with an eye on the Democrat’s nomination for 2016. Some “progressives” are already stumping for Elizabeth Warren, the junior senator from Massachusetts. And, while Warren hasn’t said that she’d like to be her party’s candidate for president, there are “progressives” who just salivate over the prospects of a Warren presidency. They consider her even further to the left than Hillary.
Neither is good news for gunowners on the right, left or center, and while some polls indicate solid support for Hillary, it’s not certain that the independent voters who really decide elections are very eager for either Clinton or Warren. However, the “first woman president” crowd would be happy to vote for either one.
Meanwhile, still holding her presidential aspirations cards close to her vest, Hillary Clinton has declared that the “gun culture” in the US is “way out of balance” and the country needs to rein in the notion that “anybody can have a gun, anywhere, anytime.”
The former secretary of state and potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate said the idea that anyone could have a gun was not in the “best interest of the vast majority of people,” while arguing that view did not conflict with the rights of people to own firearms.
Clinton was speaking at the National Council for Behavioral Health conference in Oxon Hill, MD, in early May, pointing to recent shootings that involved teens who had been playing loud music and chewing gum, and a separate incident involving the typing of text messages in a movie theatre.
“I think again we’re way out of balance. I think that we’ve got to rein in what has become an almost article of faith that anybody can have a gun, anywhere, anytime,” Clinton said. “And I don’t believe that is in the best interest of the vast majority of people. And I think you can say that and still support the right of people to own guns.”
The statement is a rephrasing of the claim popular with many anti-gunners, including Sen. Charles Schumer, that they believe in and respect the Second Amendment while they try to gut it any way they can.
The gun-grabber agenda doesn’t particularly sell well with the general public these days. Perhaps that’s why even the Democrat-controlled Senate voted against legislation pushed by President Barack Obama in 2013 that would have expanded background checks for firearm purchases to gun shows and online sales. The antigunners had hoped to pass some gun control measures while the public was still in shock in the aftermath of the deadly Sandy Hook elementary school shootings in Connecticut in December 2013. But it didn’t happen.
When a bipartisan, moderate background check proposal was advanced by Sens. Joe Manchin (DWV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), the more rabid anti-gunners rushed in to load it like a Christmas tree for billionaire exMayor Michael Bloomberg.
As one news report of Hillary’s remarks noted, “If Clinton runs for president her views on gun control would clash with those of Republicans, who have largely opposed efforts to tighten laws. During a recent conference of the National Rifle Association in Indianapolis, the Republican governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, a potential 2016 candidate, said Clinton and the vice-president, Joe Biden, considered the Second Amendment to be little more than ‘a phrase from a speech writer’.”
Clinton told attendees at the mental health conference that “at the rate we’re going, we’re going to have so many people with guns everywhere, fully licensed, fully validated” in settings like movie theaters where shootings had arisen over seemingly mundane things like loud gum chewing or cellphone use.
“That’s what happens in the countries I’ve visited where there is no rule of law and no self-control and that is something that we cannot just let go without paying attention,” she said.
What I found interesting and not surprising was that Hillary used the platform of a behavioral science conference to speak about guns rather than the current culture of death and violence, not just in the US but around the world, which has no benchmark safeguards for the lives of the innocent.
Nor did Hillary address the issue of culture change something that many commentators have noted, but few will explore. Sure, various observers can point to the modern culture awash in violent films, TV, video games as well as feel-good legal and illegal drugs, but nobody, least of all potential presidential candidates, are willing to study the problem seriously.
In fact, when so many people thought that the Sandy Hook shootings would inspire a national conversation about all the aspects of violence, nobody really engaged that conversation, especially not the current vice president, who was supposed to be in charge of the president’s commission.
An opportunity was missed, and the guy who was so ineptly steering the conversational boat, now is also being talked about as a Democrat candidate for president.
Joe Biden certainly would like to be president; he was many times a runner-up candidate. However, he’s not making any announcements. Sen. Warren isn’t saying either, but she’s put out the traditional pre-candidacy book.
And Hillary Clinton, of course, is still considering her political future, telling the Maryland audience she is someone “who has to really mull things over.”
Yeah. Me too, but it won’t be for any of the candidates I’ve mentioned here.
