With last night’s electoral victories, Hillary Clinton remains the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Barring cataclysmic legal troubles relating to her illegal emails or damning information about illegal activities recovered from deleted files — and maybe even then — Ms. Clinton will be asking the nation to elect her President. She will have to do so as a gun control crusader. Drawing on recent history, Forbes contributor Frank Miniter reckons her public embrace of civilian disarmament will hurt her chances . . .
In 2004, presidential candidates tramped around rural states thumping their chests and boasting they’ve gutted more deer and bagged more pheasants than their rivals, and anti-gun Congressmen suddenly became gun-shy. Just four years before, then-candidate Vice President Al Gore, in an interview in Outdoor Life magazine, wouldn’t even answer my questions, “Do you hunt? Do you fish?” As the 2004 election neared Senator John Kerry made sure a camera caught him when he went pheasant hunting.
Such things would not have occurred just a few years earlier. Kerry even answered my questions for an Outdoor Life sportsmen’s voter article by saying he owned an “assault weapon,” a boast that was used against him. (When The New York Times asked about the rifle Kerry backed off the claim and said an aide had made a mistake.)
In the 2006 elections, Lasorte said, “The only federal campaign we could find where gun ban/prohibition was a campaign issue touted by a candidate was in Illinois and that candidate lost . . .”
This thinking also caused Hillary to be careful with the gun issue in her 2008 primary bid.
But now Hillary is all in against gun rights at a time when gun ownership in America has been rising for at least a decade and now surpasses 100 million gun owners. Hillary has even made her desire to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) into a common part of her stump speeches. She says the PLCAA gives gun makers “carte blanche” protection from civil liability, which is such a whopper that Politifact looked into this and ruled Clinton’s claim to be “false.”
If Ms. Clinton goes up against Ted Cruz for the election, you can bet dollars to donuts that the Texas Senator will exploit the Former First Lady’s fall into the arms of gun control crusaders; Senator Cruz will attack Ms. Clinton’s “I support the Second Amendment but–” waffling like a chum-crazed shark attacking a hapless tuna.
If it’s Donald Trump competing for the presidential prize, same thing — only The Donald will be more like a Tasmanian devil chasing an angry sheep in a china shop. Or something like that.
Not that gun control is likely to be the deciding issue in the next presidential election. Unless, like Al Gore’s defeat in Tennessee, it is. Watch this space . . .
Silly rabbit, that’s what election fraud is for.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
With the move to no-paper-trail electronic voting machines, elections are even more of a farce than they used to be. Go peck at the screen for a while, and they’ll pretend they recorded your vote.
When a pen and paper is the right tool, when a computer system is difficult to build and maintain, when a computer system offers so many more vectors for compromise, one has to wonder why it is that the pen and paper are not chosen.
One wonders indeed.
Unfortunately, I think Cruz’s window is closing to become El Presidente.
It actually never opened.
It pains me to say it because I like Cruz more than anybody else in the race, but a Canadian-Cuban is just as disqualified under the natural born citizen standard as a Kenyan is.
It’s pretty clear that the founders knew of and agreed with Bastiat’s definition of natural born, which is born here to two citizen parents.
I think they would have made exceptions to the ‘born here’ part, for example if Ben Franklin’s American wife gave birth in Paris while he was serving the country as ambassador I don’t think anybody would restrict that son from holding office, but a guy whose father was a citizen (and government employee) of Kenya, not a chance. Same goes for a guy who held Canadian citizenship while sitting in the Senate, and renounced that citizenship only when he decided to run for POTUS.
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
As it turns out Franklin’s son was a loyalist anyway.
That’s the one issue that really keeps me from getting behind Cruz- I don’t think he renounced his Canadian citizenship until as recently as 2014.
Hey the basket hoop is 10 feet high all across America, he cooks bacon with an AR, and his new friend John bowing out of Indiana, is why you should vote for Cruz.
On April 27th 2016, after Cruz got his rear kicked yesterday and pretty much the entire primary’s, and has been eliminated from the nomination, you are telling people to vote for Cruz?
I note that Cruz called the basketball hoop “the basketball ring” in Indiana yesterday. They’ve been selling Cruz as super smart. I haven’t seen it, frankly.
Um…you are aware that guy with a Kenyan father got elected president, and has been president for almost eight years now, right? Also…he was born in the USA, so his father’s citizenship is irrelevant.
As for Cruz, as the child of US citizen, he has been a US citizen since birth, and is equally qualified (from a constitutional perspective).
From a courts interpretation of the Constitution. Big difference. Fed Up’s point is correct. The courts interpretation is incorrect.
You might say that the Constitutional definition of Natural Born Citizen is one who is given automatic citizenship under the laws in effect on the day he was born.
But in order to say THAT, you have to say that the meaning of the Constitution can be changed by legislation, which is an obvious falsehood.
Alternately, you can say that to meet the standard of Natural Born Citizen to clear a Constitutional hurdle, you must meet the definition of Natural Born Citizen used by the framers who inserted that phrase into the Constitution. They used those words because they did not want a Commander in Chief with potentially divided loyalty, they wanted somebody born as an American to American parents, and they recognized that it might prevent an otherwise good candidate from serving in that capacity.
I like Cruz as well, and I think his chance of eeking out a win through a convention is far behind Trump’s if it even gets to that point which looks less and less likely.
Nevertheless…
One of his parents was a natural born citizen, that makes him a natural born citizen, whether he was born here, abroad on US soil (military base or embassy for instance) or abroad on foreign soil regardless of his parent’s current residential situation whether it was visiting, temporary or seemingly permanent. As much as it may pain some to hear this the same goes for Obama. I don’t believe he was born in Hawaii like he claims, as he has touted quite the opposite numerous times prior to his first presidential bid, but that didn’t matter in concern to the objectivity of his electability (but very much says something about him anyway, not that I needed that to vote against him twice).
You’d probably be more attracted to the belief that physical location does not play a factor in whether someone is considered a natural born U.S. citizen or not when you think about the inverse. If the physical location of one’s birth does matter then what you are saying is that someone could be in the United States by any measure of circumstance, have a child, and that child is now a U.S. citizen despite the child’s parents not being so. There is actually no law in the United States that even so much as implies that, despite how widely believed it is to be true, and despite that families gain citizenship that way anyway.
The idea that a child born in America from illegal parents is somehow more legitimate than a child born to 2 citizens, one born here and the other getting his green card after getting legitimate refugee status, who happens to be born abroad due to his parents working, is disgusting.
Like yesterday’s daily roundup says, she changes her story to fit the audience.
It isn’t like the media or anybody stupid enough to vote for her will care that her lies contradict each other.
Clinton has been as disgusting an example of pure power hungry politician whose ambition and boldfaced larceny for her entire career, is now as close as ever to deciding what rights our countrymen/women can continue to enjoy, and that sucks.
I will never vote for her because she is an empty suit, only interested in power, and like her predecessor, has no respect for the law. After 8 years of suck, we are close to 4 more, maybe the idiots in this country need to see how truly hawkish and self-righteous she really is?
That’s exactly what they want her to be – towards US. They just think that because they’re in the “in” group, somehow they would be spared from her ravages. They don’t understand human nature very well.
^This. The jewish folks were just the first ones the Nazi’s put in the rail cars. Had they enough time, they’d have expanded that considerably.
The general population has a “SQUIRREL” attention span. Those that are not POTG hear about how gun ownership is at an all time high, the gun industry is scoring record sales, and gun rights are expanding at the State level. These non-gun owning people don’t have the same view as the 2000 election voters, which only narrowly elected George Bush over Al Bore. Don’t count on Hitlery to loose because of the gun issue. The long shot hope here is she actually gets indicted (a pipedream in the Obama “Justice” Dept) and has to drop out from the fallout. Don’t count on that either with the media continually falling all over themselves to ignore all of Clinton’s felonies over the last 4 decades.
Umm…the only reason Bush won in 2000 is because some old people in Florida couldn’t figure out how to use their ballots.
So now blatant ageism is offered as an argument? You have no way of knowing whether it wasn’t, in fact, a bunch of Gen X’ers that got confused by the butterfly ballots.
If people can’t figure out what lever to push, maybe they shouldn’t vote.
The keystone in Hilary’s statement is choking off the supply of guns. California is in fact doing just that. They created a list of approved guns and then years later quietly removing them and letting legal challenge delays deny reissue.
Elections are pretty much like being given an opportunity to choose a mugger. And someone is chosen as your mugger, even if you don’t “vote” for one!
None of the above. Regardless of their opinion of my guns or anything else. I don’t want any muggers in control of my life.
Not that your vote counts anyways…..
I hope for Cruz, but seriously have my doubts about his odds currently or in a contested convention. Time will tell.
What I will say about Hillary is she may be the golden child for the Democrats is she’s currently untested. Bernie has gone easy on her about the Clinton Foundation and emails so we’ll have a lot of fireworks come the general election. I would very easily consider her the Democratic Nixon.
In no particular order these are IMO the options that are better than Hillary:
1)She loses to Bernie in the Primaries. Yeah I know he’s no Heston but still a better option than Hillary IMO. Then again that’s not too hard to do.
2)Hillary goes to Jail. My favorite option quite frankly. I’d settle for her being out of politics permanently even. There’s more than enough stuff between the Clinton Foundation, emails, real estate etc. to make this happen. I also feel like the FBI is understating the scope of their investigations currently.
3)The DOJ decides to hamstring the FBI and there are mass resignations with leaks of the investigation. This would likely be highly toxic to Hillary’s chances.
4)We flat out win the presidency. This would likely be the best option. It may combine with the above options as well.
She has always been a flip-flopper on social issues. It’s no surprise that she is now “all in” for gun control because that is what her base wants. Despite gun ownership being on the rise, there is still a huge chunk of the American public that wants to see them either banned outright or subject to “common sense measures”. I don’t have anything to cite, but would it be safe to say that this issue has become even more polarized in the last 10 years? To me that explains her extreme stance now.
It’s an especially strange stance for her being as how it’s really going to only turn people off to her.
What I mean by that is this- I *highly* doubt a Democrat choosing between Sanders and Clinton is going to make it all the way down the list of differences between them to say to themselves, “Oh! I think Hillary will be even tougher on guns than Bernie would be.”
However, I think there *are* socially liberal Republicans who will not cross the party line because of Hillary’s stance on guns and will instead either not vote at all or vote Republican simply because they’re gun rights friendly for the most part.
So essentially, she’s not going to get any more votes than she would normally get and potentially loses votes she might have gotten by making that statement. Dumb.
I think the biggest factor in her favor has been her desire to repeal the PLCAA-that’s her big counter to Bernie calling her out on Wall Street connections. She plays to the low-info dem-wit that fat cat gun corporations should be held responsible for whatever, hoping to smoke-screen the whole Wall Street issue.
Hillary has nothing to fear. Between all the Democrats infecting the GOP primaries to vote for the weakest general election candidate, Trump, and all the brain dead Trumpkin new voters who think this is all just an episode of “American Idol”, Trump will be the nominee. He will lose the election, though, and he will lose HUUUGE. Hello President Hillary.
(Dis)Honorable Mention awards go out to the presidential hopelesses Rubio, Christie, Carson, and Kasich for dividing the vote for so long that Trump’s trail of mediocre pluralities racked up an early and insurmountable lead in winner take all primaries. Each of those F’ers thinks Trump will actually keep his secret promise to make each of them V.P. or A.G. or whatever he promised them.
The absolute last chance to save the republic, and these hollow men let their greed and egos enslave them. The decline and fall of America is irreversibly underway. All is dark and doubtful.
J-H has it dead on. The Conservative movement that has made huge progress in State elections over the last 20yr. Have a Conservative candidate in Cruz who is by far the most qualified GOP candidate to get the far in a nomination process in DECADES. The RINOs are OUT and desperate.
NOW a gadfly who knows diddly squat about the Constitution and our system of republican government, has no particular core belief on any subject coming in to “fix” the political process by “making deals” (which is the core of the system he intends to blow up). His support by a crew of uninformed, never been involved people.
If it goes to convention Trump will get his butt kicked. Whining Donny couldn’t bother to follow the electoral rules of the Republic. Cruz is. Trump is as the Air Force flies over, dumps a pile of shit, flies home, proclaims VICTORY that he is wonderful and his shit doesn’t stink. They heads to the club. See “Shock and Awe” Iraq. Meanwhile back on the ground the actual battle has not even begun. The Republican Conservatives have been on the ground for years.
Both your comment are a absurd.
Conservatives have been retreating on every major issue facing America for the last 30 years. The Popular right is sick and tired of it, the National right is sick and tired of it, and that is actually the Republican base.
>> The Conservative movement that has made huge progress in State elections over the last 20yr.
And none of that means squat, because it turned out that the ideology said “conservative movement” wasn’t actually shared by the significant proportion of people voting Republican. They just did it on the “it sucks less” basis. When Trump came and finally told them what they were waiting to hear all along, they flipped conservatives the bird – and rightly so.
I note that Trump has picked up 60-70% of self-identified evangelicals, and a clear majority of self-identified “very conservative” voters, in exit polls over the last seven primaries.
Perhaps it’s inside ball, but Cruz has, from the start, been dependent on Wall Street money, and promises to leave key financial company tax-breaks in place. Cruz’s politically oriented legal career got its start in the Bush 43 administration, as did his wife’s foreign affairs career. He chose a new costume for his Senate and Presidential run, but it fools few people.
The left has, for some reason, decided that Right Now is the opportune time to push the gun issue.
Can’t for the life of me imagine why.
The moderating influence of the FDR generation is dead. The wacko drug generation is in charge. No longer veiled watermelons.
Perhaps it’s because, over the last 50 years or so, they’ve won on almost every other issue? I mean, they’re pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel to find other polarizing issues to divide us – we’re really arguing about what bathrooms a microscopic portion of the population can use? Guns are the one major issue remaining that they haven’t completely won already.
Pretty much. They are running out of social justice issues to mobilize the social justice warriors on.
It won’t matter what happens after the next “advance auction on stolen goods”. However, I predict a Hitlery win. The cities [se]lect the next Dear Leader now. Elections matter not. The best thing you can do is be a good mormon or jehovah’s witness and urge people into the shooting hobby/gun culture/self defense culture and join pro gun groups.
It depends to which crowd she is talking to. When the gun media and other need to do is call her out on all her flip-flops.
See the primaries, she was not going to even say “gun” in pro-gun states but in CT, it was all about “anti-gun” legislation. What needs to be called out is when she talks about anti-gun themes and those are then presented in more pro-gun states voters
There is a silver lining to having the Hildabeast in the rainbowhouse; perhaps if she pushes arcane gun control at a national level it will gel the gun owning community into mass non-compliance and protest. Like when you let your kid get the chicken pox, a little discomfort but it ultimately fortifies the body against future attack.
To extend your metaphor – he later gets shingles which REALLY hurts.
Hillary becoming Pres would trigger a civil war. 98% chance she would not survive a month.
Oh, just shut the fuck up already.
Impressive. I am now too scared to make any additional comments.
Well, you haven’t had any history of listening to intelligent arguments (and you’re probably just a fucking troll anyway), so I might as well save my breath whilst still doing SOMETHING to indicate I think you’re a jackass.
Maybe. Things have been improving generally within the States but living in these grey times waiting for some super security state/UN force/socialist pres to go “full-retard” and try to ban everything keeps me up at night.
Then I remember the American people are currently keeping millions of rifles and rounds in closets and safes and under beds around the country, then I sleep better. 🙂
That’s why I’m saying that we should “gift” the left concessions on things like the bathroom issue and healthcare. Those issues are easy to negotiate on in comparison to our gun rights. If trans people want to piss in the bathroom they most identify with, I’ll gladly let them if we can just get guns off of the left’s radar. I wish gay marriage was still being argued in the SCOTUS, that would have been an excellent smokescreen this year.
Replies the gun-owning public:
“No Sh*i*t”
Hillary will sweep the armed felon vote. Armed felons, like Hillary, do not want us common folk to have any means of self defense.
It’s just Clinton being Clinton. This is the GOP’s contest to lose, and they’re well on their way.
The only candidate with more flaws and more disliked is Trump. Hey, lets nominate Trump. (Bang head on desk).
If the R nominee is Trump, they shouldn’t even waste the money on the election, he’ll get killed. Two gun controller liberals running, oh boy. I hope Trump drops dead, the at least we can have a pro freedom conservative be the nominee.
The meaning of the “most negatives” is fleeting. For example, when pro-Bernie Dems and devotees of one of the other 16 Republican candidates answered “I’m negative on Trump,” it was natural. They had a horse in the race. When Bernie and 16 of the Republican candidates are out of the race, negatives go down. It happens in a similar pattern in most primary seasons compared to the general election numbers.
If you think Cruz has more of a chance to get elected than Trump then you need to share what you’re smoking. Trump has cross party support. Cruz’s embrace of Christian fundamentalism won’t win him any presidential race in 2016.
Will it hurt her? Yes. Will she still beat Trump? Yes.
A vote for Trump is a vote for Clinton.
I’m a Cruz guy. But it’s over. I will grudgingly vote for the orange serial BK/scam artist and hope for the best. And beat the beast. Just hopin’ BOTH aren’t indicted this year(well donnie anyways).If donnie nominated Ted for the Supremes I’d campaign for him. What a pathetic bunch…BTW when gun supporters unite good things happen.
I agree with the article however the problem is the Republican slide is so weak and/or unpopular it won’t matter enough to prevent her from getting in. People are generally socially liberal and fiscally conservative – which is why Cruz is not appealing. Trump of course has high unfavorables and victory for him is very unlikely.
As pro-gun people we need to cast the Second Amendment as part of “socially liberal” – it is a central constitutional right that is under attack. A pro-gun strategy should be to take advantage of the loyalty and protection we get from the Cruzes and Fuckabees but make sure we’re not really tied to aging conservatives.
That sounds real good and all, but it only matters if people actually go vote. If they don’t get off the couch, gather their friends and Second Amendment supporters and actually go to the voting booth, then Hillary will become President and implement all of the gun control she’s been blathering about.
And if you’re thinking that will start a revolution of some kind, consider: who is it, exactly, that you’re depending on to go into mortal danger, face loss of jobs, loss of homes, loss of friends and family, hardship, starvation, injury and death? The people who couldn’t even be bothered to go vote?
You think that will matter to the internet commandos who are saying there’s be a revolution? They can’t even rely on themselves, and they know it. They’re just afraid we’ll figure it out.
How many of the people cheering on Dear for trying to prevent “murders” have actually put their money where their mouths were? ZERO. (And in that case, that’s a good thing.)
Same dynamic at work here.
I heard an interesting radio item this morning. This featured a British author whose book covers the period where she became the de facto civilian ruler of a part of Iraq after the 2003 illegal invasion. She later worked with the general in charge of the “Surge” under Petraeus, and was witness to the devolution of civilian government in the post 2009 time frame. What she saw was Hilary Clinton’s chosen ambassador to Iraq, one Chris Hill, who arrived in a cloud of ignorance and stupidity, agreeing to the Shia takeover of the whole Iraqi infrastructure, under the patronage of Iran. All Sunnis in government positions were romoved, and this directly resulted in the formation of ISIS, alongside the dregs of the destroyed Al Qaeda. Since then, proxy wars have been faught in all Muslim nations on behalf of their sponsors in Iran and Saudi Arabia. So Hilary can claim credit for ISIS. Will she? Unfortunately I didn’t think to write dwn the author’s details.
The Sunni’s had the rug pulled out from under them at the very beginning when the Coalition Provisional Authority blacklisted all members of the Sunni Bath party. Many decent people join “controversial” political parties just to be eligible for public sector jobs. Rebuilding Germany after WW2 was easier because they didn’t banish everyone affiliated with the Nazi Party.
Much blood, treasure and sweat was spent trying to correct the “de-Bathification” blunder. But it didn’t take long for a detached and self-absorbed politician (Hillary Clinton) to piss it all away.
Insult to injury, Petreaus, one of many who helped turn the situation around in Iraq, had his life turned upside down by the Obama Justice Department for misdemeanor mishandling classified information. Hillary Clinton who let the world fall apart on her watch gets away with felony mishandling of classified of information.
As a far left 2nd amendment supporter I can’t bring myself to vote for her… so, yeah.