PA Bill Number: HB335

Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.

Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...

Last Action: Re-committed to APPROPRIATIONS

Last Action Date: May 6, 2024

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E-mail scandal not only 'mistake' coming back to haunt Hillary :: 09/10/2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s e-mail scandal, for which she yesterday offered something of an apology during an interview with ABC News, isn’t the only “mistake” now haunting the former First Lady and would-be next president.

She may have made matters worse today by speaking at the Brookings Institute in support of the Iran nuclear deal, which is facing increasing opposition. She included some caveats, according to a story published earlier today by the New York Times, but overall the story said she “embraced” the deal.

Today’s Washington Free Beacon also details another problem that erupted over the holiday weekend and is being heavily discussed by Second Amendment activists on social media. Back in 1993, when she was pushing her ill-fated health care plan, she told Congress that she was “all for” a proposed 25 percent national sales tax on firearms, insisting that it would be a way to fight violent crime at that time. She had been asked by then-Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ) if she would endorse the proposed tax during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 30, 1993.

“I’m all for that,” Clinton said at the time. “I just don’t know what else we’re going to do to try to figure out how to get some handle on this violence.”

Clinton has never been a friend of gun owners. The former Secretary of State and junior senator from New York, Clinton has an established record in support of gun control measures. This history lesson was essentially a reminder of that record to potential voters next year.

The Free Beacon story quotes Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, who noted with sarcasm, “If Hillary Clinton only wanted to enact a new 25 percent tax on firearms America’s gun owners would be lucky. The fact is she also supports a ban on most semi-auto firearms and limits on standard capacity magazines.

“In truth,” he added, “she has never supported any legislation that protected or expanded Second Amendment rights, period.”

But will she apologize for that in order to woo millions of American gun owners? Not likely, despite her declining poll numbers. Yesterday’s e-mail apology is an attempt to impress core constituents, not the Second Amendment community.

The new controversy over a 22-year-old position she took on guns comes at an interesting moment. The Second Amendment Foundation, which Gottlieb founded, is suing the City of Seattle over a newly-adopted $25 tax on the retail sale of firearms, plus a nickel-per-cartridge tax on ammunition. SAF is joined in that lawsuit by the National Rifle Association and National Shooting Sports Foundation, plus two Seattle firearms retailers and two private citizens.

In a telephone chat Tuesday with Chicago-area gun dealer John Riggio, proprietor at Chuck’s Gun Shop in suburban Riverdale, he detailed the battle that he and other gun dealers are waging against Cook County’s $25 gun tax. Seattle’s scheme is a virtual carbon-copy of that measure, which took effect appropriately on April 1, 2013, "April Fool's Day." That tax is also supposed to finance so-called “anti-violence” programs, but a look at the body count in Chicago so far this year suggests Cook County needs a new game plan.

Seattle officials have predicted that their gun tax scheme will bring in between $300,000 and $500,000 to finance similar anti-violence programs and research. Critics don’t think the tax will bring in anywhere near that amount, and even if it does, using the Chicago experience is their example, Seattle will spend a lot of money while the homicide rate goes up.

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