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: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
Is America getting tired of Clinton's gun control obsession yet? :: 04/27/2016
This morning’s Los Angeles Times story about how Newtown “seems intent on moving past the tragedy…in 2012” as the Connecticut primary unfolds today seems to carry a message that may resonate with voters: While Hillary Clinton may be energized by talking about gun control, a lot of people including many in Newtown have “a general weariness…”
Yesterday’s release of survey results by the National Shooting Sports Foundation that more than 70 percent of Americans do not support lawsuits against the firearms industry, which is a favorite Clinton meme of late. Also yesterday, Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott took Clinton to task at National Review Online for repeating “the false statistic that gun violence claims the lives of ‘33,000 people a year’ in the United States.” That claim has been challenged by others, as this column has repeatedly reported.
“In fact,” Lott wrote, “in 2014 there were 21,334 firearm suicides, 586 accidental gun deaths, and 8,214 gun murders. Clinton gets to 33,000 by adding to the statistics above roughly 3,000 justifiable homicides by police and civilians.”
Lott further chided Clinton for lumping suicides together with murders, noting that she supports assisted suicide. “Given that Clinton supports assisted-suicide laws,” he said, “it is a little strange that she lumps together suicides with murders.” That assertion was based on a ProCon.org assessment published on line last month, quoting a 2008 interview Clinton did with the editorial board of the Eugene Register-Guard in Oregon.
In the Newtown piece, the L.A. Times noted, “What the town can’t escape is being politicized in the debate over gun control in this country.” Politicizing a tragedy is straight out of the gun control playbook, as detailed in the 2014 book “Dancing In Blood: Exposing the Gun Ban Lobby’s Playbook to Destroy Your Rights,” co-authored by Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.
Clinton has definitely politicized the 2012 tragedy, and she’s not alone. President Barack Obama tried to use the event to push new gun restrictions through Congress. Other gun prohibitionists have used Newtown to push for so-called “universal background checks” while carefully ignoring the fact that killer Adam Lanza bypassed a background check by murdering his mother and taking her guns. She bought the guns legally, at a Connecticut gun shop. Connecticut has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation and none of them stopped Lanza.
Today’s primaries in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and elsewhere may assure a Clinton nomination. But it may be a mistake for her to count them as a mandate supporting her position on guns, despite some fawning commentary on her "courage" for taking on "the gun lobby."
It is a long time before November. In a political campaign, a week can be an eternity. And the election will come at a time of year when millions of good, honest citizens are heading afield with their legally-owned firearms. Protecting the right that protects those guns could easily be a priority around campfires and cook tents.
By making gun control a cornerstone of her campaign, Clinton seems oblivious to the fact that she is alienating millions of potential voters. Those people may not warm up to a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, or even a John Kasich. But by November, they might be stone cold against letting Hillary anywhere near the White House.
http://www.examiner.com/article/is-america-getting-tired-of-clinton-s-gun-control-obsession-yet
