On May 10 FactCheck.org examined Hillary Clinton’s gun control aspirations and suggested her praise for Australia’s gun confiscation scheme does not necessarily make her pro-confiscation.
They also admitted Clinton wants to ban “assault weapons,” yet suggested this in no way shows she wants to take guns away.
FactCheck.org noted Clinton’s October 16 statement that Australia’s gun confiscation scheme “would be worth considering” for gun policy in the United States yet simultaneously claimed Donald Trump “distorts Clinton’s gun stance” when he says she wants to take away guns.
They did this by trying to equate Clinton’s praise of the Australian approach with praise of gun buybacks. But they missed the whole point–Australia’s 1996 buyback was not like those which Democrat office holders in the U.S. sponsor for people who want to voluntarily turn in an old gun. Rather, the buyback was a mandatory one that veiled real confiscatory goals. Clinton knows this, and that is why she not only praised the Australian ban but also the bans in the UK and Canada.
On October 16 Clinton said:
You know, Australia’s a good example, Canada’s a good example, [and] the UK’s a good example. Why? Because each of them had mass killings, Australia had a huge mass killing about 20 or 25 years ago. Canada did as well, so did the UK. In reaction, they passed much stricter gun laws. In the Australian example, as I recall, that was a buyback program. The Australian government as part of trying to clamp down on the availability of…weapons offered a good price for buying hundreds of thousands of guns and basically clamped down going forward, in terms of having more of a background check approach–more of a permitting approach.
Her admission is that Australia bought up the weapons, then allowed certain people to get a permit to have a weapon thereafter with government approval. So it was not just confiscation, but confiscation followed by a gun and gun owner licensing program.
FactCheck.org also admits Clinton wants to institute an “assault weapons” ban, but because the previous federal ban only banned the sale of “assault weapons”–rather than their possession–they assume she does not want to ban possession either. The problem with this assumption is that the previous ban began over two decades ago, and Democrats have grown far more anti-gun since then. State-level “assault weapons” bans in New York and city-level bans in Chicago show the folly of believing an “assault weapons” ban is anything but.
Moreover, Clinton has been very clear that she not only wants to enact gun control but also wants to exceed those who went before her in so doing.
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.
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