You may have seen the NRA’s latest shot across Hillary’s ample bow. The gun rights org’s slickly produced spot says that, “she doesn’t believe in your right to keep a gun at home for self defense.” Hold on, though. A claim like that simply can’t go un-challenged. So out of the east, in a cloud of dust rides one of the Clinton campaign’s most dedicated mouthpieces, the Washington Post and their lulz-worthy ‘Fact Checker’ attempt at, uh, correcting the record.
The NRA did not respond to queries, but Jennifer Baker, the public affairs director for the NRA’s lobbying arm, told PolitiFact North Carolina that the language was justified because Clinton has been critical of the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in Heller v. District of Columbia. That 5-to-4 decision held that the Second Amendment of the Constitution affords private citizens the right to keep firearms in their homes and that such possession need not be connected to military service.
In a private fundraiser in 2015, Clinton was recorded as saying that the Supreme Court was “wrong on the Second Amendment” and called for reinstating the assault-weapons ban, which expired in 2004.
Wait! Whose argument is the Post making here? If a “recovering lawyer” thinks the Court got Heller wrong — the decision that affirmed the individual right to keep and bear arms in their homes — then the NRA was right. Right?
No so fast, bunky. You’re thinking about this too clearly. There’s far too much nuance and wiggle room here for WaPo’s industrious Clinton surrogates fact checkers to affirm a claim like that from the hated NRA.
Clinton has said that she disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller, but she has made no proposals that would strip Americans of the right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.
Well, no…no she didn’t. This is an election season after all and proposing firearms registration or outright confiscation of privately owned guns — even if you have the entirety of the mainstream media propping you up — wouldn’t do much for her polling.
Besides, the NRA commercial only said she doesn’t believe in your right to keep a gun at home for self defense. Not that she’s talked about doing anything about it. So isn’t it at least defensible?
Not in the WaPo’s port-tilted view. In order to carry the candidate’s water, the paper hangs its rhetorical hat on the unknowable-ness of the future. Who’s to say how her nominees to the court would ultimately vote? It’s all such an impenetrable mystery!
Clinton is certainly in favor of more gun regulations and tougher background checks, and a more nuanced ad could have made this case. Conjuring up a hypothetical Supreme Court justice ruling in a hypothetical case is simply not enough for such a sweeping claim. That tips the ad’s claim into the Four-Pinocchio category.
Of course it does. As she said in a recent interview,
I’m not looking to repeal the Second Amendment. I’m not looking to take people’s guns away….
Whew! What a relief.