In last night’s debate with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, presumptive Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton lashed out at the “minutemen” militia patrolling America’s southern border. “And as I said earlier, in 2006, Senator Sanders supported indefinite detention for people facing deportation…and stood with the Minutemen vigilantes in their ridiculous, absurd efforts to, quote, hunt down immigrants.” Moderator Jorge Ramos pushed Sanders on that point . . .
RAMOS: Did you support the Minutemen, Senator? Did you support the Minutemen?
SANDERS: Of course not. There was a piece of legislation supported by dozens and dozens of members of the House which codified existing legislation. What the secretary is doing tonight and has done very often is take large pieces of legislation and take pieces out of it.
Well, not really. The Washington Post’s fact checkers had this to say about that:
“Clinton was referring to an incident that BuzzFeed documented in December. In 2006, members of Congress had become upset at rumors that American officials were tipping off the Mexican government about the whereabouts of Minutemen patrols,” our Fact Checkers explain.
“Sanders, then a House member, was one of 76 Democrats who voted in favor of an amendment that barred the Department of Homeland Security from providing ‘a foreign government information relating to the activities of an organized volunteer civilian action group, operating in the State of California, Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona.’ Sanders was running for a Senate seat at the time.”
Fair enough.
Meanwhile, Ms. Clinton’s willingness to describe lawful gun owners acting lawfully in defense of this country’s borders as “vigilantes,” somehow neglecting to mention that the Minutemen are helping U.S. Border Patrol agents capture illegal immigrants, is a harbinger of things to come. In other words, despite once-frequent, now-disappeared rhetoric to the contrary, the former First Lady views all gun owners as “the enemy.”
While I have publicly stated my misgivings indeed disgust at Donald Trump’s candidacy (and will continue to do so), I join my colleague Johannes Paulsen in emphasizing that the devil we don’t know is better than the devil we do. If Ms. Clinton attains the presidency our gun rights are in mortal peril. This much is true.