Vote Like Your Guns Depend on It (They Do)

On November 8, every gun owner and Second Amendment supporter in America needs to vote as if your guns depend on it — because they do.

The contrast between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could not be more stark than when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms. Trump has pledged to preserve that right, to maintain the Second Amendment “in its strongest form.” But Clinton has vowed to implement numerous new gun controls — including an “assault weapons” ban, a “high-capacity” magazine ban, and universal background checks, which, by the way, have already failed to stop terrorists and mass attackers in California, Colorado, Washington state, and Paris.

In fact, the WikiLeaks Podesta email release revealed that Clinton plans to use executive action to circumvent Congress and expand background checks so as to abolish private sales at gun shows.

Yet Clinton looked voters in the eye during the third presidential debate and said, “I support the Second Amendment.” In that same debate, she talked about choosing Supreme Court justices who will tweak — if not reverse — the ruling in District of Columbia v Heller (2008). That is the ruling in which SCOTUS reaffirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Clinton openly disagrees with the decision, which makes one wonder how she can both oppose Heller yet support the Second Amendment?

The simple answer is that she can’t. And all her gun control machinations — from the afore mentioned “assault weapons” ban to her plans to make gun makers and sellers liable for gun crimes — prove that she will gut the Second Amendment if she gets the chance to hold our nation’s highest office.

On the other hand, Trump is a concealed carry permit holder, a life member of the NRA, and stands against “assault weapons” bans, “high-capacity” magazine bans, and any expansion of background checks. Moreover, Trump has been clear that he plans to nominate a Supreme Court justice similar to Antonin Scalia, thereby protecting the Second Amendment and the Heller decision rather than pillaging both.

Think about how the two candidates react when a high-profile gun crime occurs. Clinton responded to the San Bernardino and Orlando Pulse attacks by calling for more gun control via an “assault weapons” ban and an expansion of background checks that would include terror watch lists. She completely overlooked the fact that neither the San Bernardino attackers nor the Orlando attacker was on a list, so such an expansion would not have hindered them from buying guns in the least. Moreover, she failed to note that both attacks took place in gun-free zones, so the issue was not the kind of gun they used but the fact that innocent people were barred from being armed for self-defense.

How did Trump respond to these incidents? In both cases, he stressed that concealed carry could have saved lives, if not prevented the attacks altogether.

During a January 10 appearance on Meet the Press, Trump talked about the terror attacks in Paris and the one in San Bernardino, saying:

If in Paris or if in California recently, where the fourteen people were killed and probably others to follow–in terms of that group because you have some people who are very, very badly wounded–if in Paris they had guns or if in California [they had guns,] on the other side, where the bullets go both ways, not just in one direction. You wouldn’t have had the kind of carnage that you had.

The choice is elementary: Do you want a president who will continue President Obama’s habit of using every high-profile gun crime as a justification for more gun control and/or all-out bans on certain types of firearms, or do you want a president who sees gun-free zones as a problem, who believes the armed citizen is key in both the fight against crime and against terror? If your position is the latter — that an armed citizenry is as “necessary to the security of a free state” now as it was when the Second Amendment was ratified — then Trump is your candidate. And November 8 is your day.

Vote like your guns depend on it (they do).

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.