On November 11, the National Rifle Association (NRA) reminded everyone in the Twittersphere that gun control was on the ballot in the presidential election, and it lost.
Hillary Clinton ran on a gun control platform while President-elect Donald Trump ran on pledges to defend the Second Amendment.
On August 15, 2015, the Washington Post succinctly summarized the crux of Clinton’s gun control push, reporting:
[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.
In addition to these things, Clinton was open about her plans to use Supreme Court vacancies to nominate justices who would reverse–or at least tweak–the District of Columbia v Heller (2008) decision. That decision reaffirmed that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right.
Trump’s platform was the complete opposite of Clinton’s. In fact, during the October 9 presidential debate Trump said he was going save the Second Amendment from “people like Hillary Clinton.”
So the choice was clear–a vote for Clinton was a vote for gun control and a vote for Trump was a vote to defend gun rights from further government intrusion and regulation. Or, as the NRA put it, “Simply put, gun control was on the ballot this election season, and it suffered a resounding loss.”
And the NRA observes that gun control’s defeat reaffirms the strength NRA members possess when they rally to the cause:
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.