Hillary vs the NRA

Gun Watch ^ | 21 September, 2016 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Hillary Clinton has picked a fight with the NRA and Second Amendment supporters.  It was not required.  From 1995 to 2012, the Democrats had shied away from public fights with the NRA, because of the severe beating at the polls they took in 1994.  It can be argued that the the Democrats gained the presidency of Barack Obama because they stayed quiet on Second Amendment issues during his elections.  But after being re-elected in 2012, Obama and the Democrats fiercely attacked the NRA.  They lost big in the 2014 mid-terms.

Hillary must believe that the demographics have flipped in her favor, and she can attack the NRA, claim she respects the Second Amendment, and say that the Supreme Court was wrong in holding that the Second Amendment is an individual right, all at the same time, and gain votes.

Here is the clip where she says the enemy that she is most proud of making is the NRA.

Link to video

Her problem is that she is not trusted nearly as much as the NRA.  Her favorability rating is between 10 and 20 points below that for the NRA. In spite of surveys that have been widely circulated in "progressive" circles, gun ownership is likely at some of the highest levels ever in the United States.

The other problem is that Second Amendment supporters are highly motivated, and often single issue voters.  Gun haters, on the other hand, are not nearly as motivated, are a much smaller group, and are almost all in the Democrat base to start with.

Trump, on the other hand, has been consistently pro-Second Amendment during the campaign.  He has high unfavorables; but an NRA endorsement works to raise him up, and against Hillary.

The extent to which the establishment media and Hillary allies are spinning her position on the NRA and the Second Amendment are extraordinary.  Politifact is a good example.  From Politifact:

Speaker: NRA

Statement: Says Hillary Clinton “doesn’t believe in your right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.”

Ruling: Clinton has never said that. The NRA cited a recording of her saying she disagreed with a Supreme Court case affirming some gun rights, but the same recording shows Clinton is clearly talking about concerns other than keeping a gun at home for self-defense. She specifically talks about someone going armed to a grocery store. We rate this claim False.

Politfact conveniently ignores that Hillary is a lawyer, and the Heller case did not make a finding about people going to the store with an AK47.  The case was all about the right of the people to own guns in their home for self defense.  She said:

"So I’m going to speak out. … The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment, and I am going to make my case on that every chance I get."

Politifact then goes on to claim that Hillary's statement in 2015, long after the Heller decision in 2008, was the same as the Bush administration concerns about the case before it was decided.

Politifact makes the unconvincing argument that President Bush could not be against the right to self defense in the home before the decision was made (far from proven). Therefore Hillary's statement years after the decision, which was all about the individual right to self defense in the home, could not be against self defense in the home.

The argument simply makes no logical sense.  What does President Bush have to do with the question?  What does his position before the decision was made, have to do with Hillary's definitive statement years after the decision was settled law?  This is what passes for a defense of Hillary's stand on the Second Amendment.

The Washington Post echoed politifact's argument.

The NRA ad will resonate with voters.  It is not that the NRA has a direct quote of Hillary Clinton saying that she wants to confiscate all American's guns in her first term.  No one, at least until recently, would believe that Hillary would be so stupid as to say such a thing directly.

But very few believe what Hillary says, because the vast majority of people know that she is a liar with a long history of lies.  When some one catches her in an unguarded moment saying that she believes the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment, they believe her.  They do not believe she is making some nuanced policy that is really Republican.

If it comes to a choice between Hillary and the NRA, the NRA wins.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Link to Gun Watch

[marktwain]

If it comes down to Hillary vs the NRA, the NRA wins.

[Paladin2]

Will H->! become the year’s Best Gun Salesman?

[marktwain]

If she wins, she will rival Barack!

[556x45]

Its a mystery to me why she’s picking this fight. Gun ownership esp amoung women is up, gun ownership is at an all time high as is concealed carry plus the push for repeal of NFA. Add to that knife reform and it seems like shes going bare knuckles with a gathering force far bigger than she understands. Its a fight shes (or liberals in general) are going to win. In fact most often theyre on the losing side.

[556x45]

‘Its a fight shes (or liberals in general) are going to win. ‘

Sorry that should read:
Its a fight shes (or liberals in general) arent going to win.

[jmacusa]

Democrats created gun control. It was first a measure to keep guns from being owned by freed slaves so that other Democrat creation, the Ku Klux Klan, could more easily kill them. Totalitarians like the Communists and Marxists in America, who call themselves Democrats don’t want an armed populace. The reason should be obvious. As Jefferson once observed “An honest statesman need not fear an armed populace’’.

[marktwain]

I think she is drinking her own Koolaid here.

She believes that gun owners and Second Amendment supporters are a tiny minority of old white guys. She is wrong.

“Progressives” are nothing if they cannot lie to themselves.

[Billthedrill]

From 1995 to 2012, the Democrats had shied away from public fights with the NRA, because of the severe beating at the polls they took in 1994...Hillary must believe that the demographics have flipped in her favor, and she can attack the NRA...

No, it was actually she and BJ Billy who pooched the thing in '94 by outrageous overreach on the AWB, and she hasn't learned a thing since. Remember "I'm going to stretch this just as far as I can"? Well, she did, and it broke.

This is really more a case of class warfare and identity politics than anything else. She has a tidily identified enemy class in the NRA because it symbolizes a larger, less closely identified class of gun owners who she likes to demonize. She needs the NRA as a focus for hatred. If it didn't exist she'd have to make it up. Now, about the Tea Party...

[556x45]

Whats even odder about all this is that she’s not talking about a gun-free society. She’s only interested in removing guns from the hands of unfavored groups. So this debate isnt about guns are bad but guns are bad in the hands of groups X, Y and Z. Everybody else can have them because the govt sanctions ownership for them. How will liberals controt the 2ndA into this sort of language?

[marktwain]

I think you are correct as the NRA as a designated enemy to hate.

But, it just does not work for her in the demographics. A considerably greater percentage of people are pro-NRA today than existed in 1994, and Bill and her were creamed on the issue in the 1994 mid-terms.

Maybe she things presidential elections are enough different for her purposes.

[CrazyIvan]

“Gun ownership esp amoung women is up.........”

I work in a nursing home. A lot of the staff are young women and their schedule has them to and from work at odd hours alone. At lunch last year one of them mentioned that she had heard that CCW was now legal in Illinois and that she was thinking about getting licensed but didn’t know how. I told her I was licensed and pointed her in the right direction. I’d guess a dozen more have inquired since then.

[marktwain]

She is trying to salami slice.

I am not after *your* guns, just *those other guys*.

I don’t think it will work.

[OttawaFreeper]

That’s a major reason why even Bush I lost in 1992, as he promised to sign the Brady Bill if it ever reached his desk (and probably did not philosophically have a problem with other things on with what we knew back then as HCI as their wish list). Much of the pro gun vote either stayed home or went with Ross Perot.

[Uversabound]

“An honest statesman need not fear an armed populace’’.

How did our Founders know what would happen in the future?

They were divinely driven but also history repeats itself.

Cankles may not be able to effect the organization but she is showing her people that she is making the effort.

Intentions, intentions..............GO TRUMP!!!

[marktwain]

Good work!

[jmacusa]

Good job.

[556x45]

Outstanding...and heartwarming at the same time!!!

[longfellow]

She’s already dying of Parkinson does she really want lead poisoning too.?

[Liberty Ship]

“I’m Hillary Clinton. And I am treason’s safest place.”

[Billthedrill]

Absolutely. What people lose when they focus on the NRA is that the NRA is a lobbying organization consisting of only five million people, (contrast a behemoth such as AARP, eight to nine times that size), and the gun prohibitionists are losing by a lot more than five million votes. It isn't who is a member of the NRA that counts, it's who they - we - influence, and the libs are in ferocious denial that that's a lot of people who don't want the heavy hand of the state on their lives.

The fact is, we got burned so badly in 1994 and shortly thereafter, when those dozen or so "assault weapons" ratcheted up to over 200, that convincing anyone who is aware of that past that the libs only want a "little" more regulation is impossible. There isn't any good faith negotiation and everybody knows it.

And the NRA got burned organizationally as well, because the existing administration was convinced that what the gun control side wanted through the AWB was actually reasonable, and tried to sell that to their membership, and ended up out the door when it turned out that they got taken by gun control liars. As you recall, that's when the struggle between the Neal Knox and the Wayne LaPierre wings repopulated the NRA leadership. There wasn't anyone left who hadn't felt the burn.

I'm suggesting that organizationally the NRA learned its lesson and is far less prone to even consider negotiating with liars and cheats, and that the population of gun owners who are not members has grown and become more suspicious, and rightfully so, of legal efforts to infringe on their rights. Hillary is trying to fight a 20-year-old war with 20-year-old tactics. And she's losing.