Hillary Goes for the Guns

Hillary Clinton is making gun violence a central focus of her campaign platform — directly targeting the National Rifle Association.

“Nothing is more powerful than the gun lobby and until we are ready to take them on and hold them accountable we will not be in a position to try to begin to reduce the deaths from the epidemic of gun violence,” Clinton said.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and CEO of the NRA, had some fighting words for Clinton at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in early March. “Mrs. Clinton, If you want to come after the NRA, and if you want to fight over the God-given rights of America’s 100 million gun owners, if you want to turn this election into a bare-knuckled brawl for the survival of our constitutional freedoms, bring it on,” LaPierre said.

When Clinton ran for president in 2008, she said she would protect the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, but this time around she has taken a very different and extreme position.

It is no secret Clinton is trying to pivot herself more to the left as her opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders has forced her to do so as the base of the Democratic party grows more progressive. But Clinton has gone where no other presidential candidate has gone before — aggressively taking on the NRA.

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Last October, Clinton slammed the Supreme Court as “wrong on the second amendment” and called for reinstating the assault weapons ban. Presumably Clinton was referring to the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision.

The central conclusion in Heller was that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. That ruling overturned the District of Columbia’s total ban on ownership of handguns, finding it unconstitutional.

With Obama nominating Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, many fear that gun rights in America will be under siege. The NRA has warned that if the critical D.C. v. Heller decision is overturned, it would be the end of the Second Amendment.

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Clinton has praised Obama’s nomination of Garland, and presumably may re-nominate him if the GOP-led Congress doesn’t vote on his nomination. “He has chosen a nominee with considerable experience on the bench and in public service, a brilliant legal mind, and a long history of bipartisan support and admiration,” said Clinton in a statement.

Garland seems to be hostile to the rights of gun owners and has even supported gun registries. Back in 2007, he voted to undo a D.C. Circuit court decision that struck down one of the most restrictive gun laws in the country that banned individual handgun possession.

Garland has a history of consistently voting against Second Amendment freedoms and also believes that an assault weapons ban is constitutional.

Undoubtedly, Clinton would push an unprecedented heavy anti-gun agenda if elected, and that should scare law-abiding citizens everywhere.