Washington Post Admits Hillary Clinton Wants All Gun Controls the NRA Warned About

In a column intended to suggest the National Rifle Association (NRA) is exaggerating Hillary Clinton’s gun control positions, The Washington Post (WaPo), instead, succeeded in admitting that Clinton wants all the gun controls about which the NRA has warned.

The WaPo column begins by pointing to an NRA ad that described Clinton as “one of the wealthiest women in politics,” who has a “combined income: $30 million,” “tours the world in private jets,” and has been “protected by armed guards for 30 years.” The ad’s narrator says, “But she doesn’t believe in your right to keep a gun at home for self-defense. She’s an out-of-touch hypocrite. And she’d leave you defenseless.”

The WaPo then quoted an unnamed “reader” from Pittsburgh who responded to the ad by saying he knew Clinton “was for stronger gun laws,” but he wondered if it was true that she “didn’t believe in your right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.” WaPo attempts to answer the reader’s question in the negative, i.e., by suggesting that Clinton really does not want to leave you defenseless. And it tries to dismiss the anti-gun convictions of possible Clinton Supreme Court nominees by intimating one can never really know how a justice will rule in a given case.

The suggestion is that the NRA is up to its old games of going hyperbolic on threats to the Second Amendment.

But as the column continues, the WaPo acknowledges all the gun controls Clinton supports–including a ban on an entire category of firearms.

Wapo reported that Clinton supports:

more comprehensive background checks, repealing the gun industry’s immunity from lawsuits for negligence, revoking the licenses of gun dealers that knowingly supply weapons to straw purchasers and gun traffickers, and toughening laws and regulations to prevent domestic abusers and the mentally ill from obtaining guns. She also calls for a renewal of the assault-weapons ban.

Those not familiar with leftist gun control jargon should take note that “comprehensive background checks” are the “universal background checks” that exist in California, Colorado, Paris, France, and Munich, Germany–all sites of some of the highest profile and deadliest shootings of the last 18 months.

Breitbart News previously reported that Clinton’s use of the word “immunity” is misleading at best. Her actual goal is to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (2005), which protects gun makers and sellers from frivolous lawsuits filed over guns that were legally manufactured and legally sold but later used in crime, perhaps by someone who stole the gun from the original owner. Apart from these two caveats, the WaPo’s list of gun controls supported by Clinton reads very similar to the list of gun controls the NRA says she supports.

Moreover, the WaPo even admits that Clinton twice “dodged” answering a question as to whether “a constitutional right to bear arms” even exists. This transpired during the June 5 airing of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. After being pressed by Stephanopoulos, Clinton finally said, “If it is a constitutional right, then it–like every constitutional right–is subject to reasonable regulation.”

So Clinton supports universal background checks, removing protections from frivolous lawsuits against the gun industry, placing more regulations on licensed gun dealers, changing the language of statutes to prohibit gun purchases for more people, and banning the possession of an entire category of firearms the left describes as “assault weapons.” Additionally, she hesitates when asked if “a constitutional right to bear arms” even exists.

So is the NRA actually wrong?

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.