Just hours after Donald Trump renewed his claim that Hillary Clinton wants to “abolish” the Second Amendment, PolitiFact tried to counter by suggesting that Clinton “misspoke” or misunderstand the Australian gun ban when she voiced support for it in October 2015.
On October 16 Clinton said the Australian ban was “worth looking at” for gun policy in the U.S.
But PolitiFact suggests the claim that Clinton wants to “abolish” the Second Amendment is “false” because “she may have misspoken or not fully understood Australia’s program.”
In order to prove Trump wrong, PolitiFact even worked to dismiss Clinton’s refusal to admit Americans have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. On June 5 Bretibart News reported that Clinton twice refused to admit the right to keep and bear is constitutional during the airing of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. But PolitiFact claims this refusal has to be viewed in light of her rejection of the ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and therefore, may not be a 100 percent rejection after all.
By the way, Clinton’s problem with the Heller ruling is that it reaffirmed an individual right to keep and bear arms that the federal government cannot violate. Two years later–in McDonald v. Chicago (2010)–the Supreme Court affirmed that this individual right is incorporated under the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby barring states/cities from violating it as well. Clinton is at war with Heller because she knows that if she can be successful in reversing the recognition of an individual right, then she can be successful in opening the floodgates for gun control at city, state, and federal levels.
Her spokesman Josh Schwerin said as much when Trump first began warning that Clinton wants to “abolish” the Second Amendment. Huffington Post reported that Schwerin rejected the language of “abolish” or “repeal,” but affirmed that Clinton “believes Heller was wrongly decided in that cities and states should have the power to craft common sense laws to keep their residents safe.”
So PolitiFact and Schwerin miss the fact that one does not have to “repeal,” erase, or otherwise remove the words of the Second Amendment to “abolish” it. The most simple approach would be to let it stand but empty it of meaning. And that is exactly what Clinton tries to do when she wars against Heller and refuses to admit the existence of a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. It is a covert means of abolishing the Second Amendment.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.