On Fox News Sunday this morning, Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told Chris Wallace that she doesn't want the Supreme Court's 2008 Heller decision overturned.
Clinton said this after Wallace introduced the topic by referring to a statement Mrs. Clinton made at a fundraiser last year that "The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment." If we had a responsible establishment press, Mrs. Clinton's inconsistency on such a major presidential campaign issue would be major news by now.
In the Heller case, the Court ruled that the Second Amendment's plain language establishes an individual's right to keep and bear arms, that the District of Columbia could not prevent Dick Anthony Heller from owning a gun, and that it could not keep him from having it readily available for potential use. The only way the 5-4 Court majority could have been "wrong on the Second Amendment" in issuing that decision is if it was, in Mrs. Clinton's view, "wrong" about the possession of firearms and other weapons of self-defense being an individual right. She was either not telling the truth about what she believes at her fundraiser, or she was lying to Wallace about what she truly believes and wishes to accomplish.
More recently, a Clinton senior policy advisor's emailed statement to Bloomberg News in May stated that Mrs. Clinton believes that Heller was "wrongly decided." Ballotpedia still lists Maya Harris, the advisor involved, as a member of Mrs. Clinton's policy team.
Mrs. Clinton's initial dodgy answer to Wallace on Sunday was that she doesn't want to "repeal the Second Amendment." That wasn't the question. Wallace wasn't asking if she wanted to sign on to the process of having Congress and 38 of 50 state legislatures take the Second Amendment out of the Constitution.
After Wallace asked a "Yes/No" question about whether she wants to see "the Heller decision, the individual right to bear arms, overturned," she said "No." Cynics might observe that she instead wants to see the ninth Supreme Court justice, whom the next President will nominate, turn out to be a gun-grabbing leftist who will do it for her.
She then said what she wants is for Congress to pass "the kind of common-sense reforms that I'm proposing."
Here is the full relevant video segment from Sunday morning's show:
Transcript (full show transcript is here; bolds are mine throughout this post):
... CHRIS WALLACE: I want to talk not about Trump, but about you and drill down into some of the positions that you’ve taken in this campaign. At a fund-raiser last year you said this, "The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment." Now, in the 2008 Heller case, the court said there's a constitutional individual right to bear arms.
What's wrong with that?
HILLARY CLINTON: Well, I think what the court said about there being an individual right is in line with constitutional thinking. And I said in the convention, I’m not looking to repeal the Second Amendment. I’m not looking to take people's guns away, but I am looking for more support for the reasonable efforts that need to be undertaken to keep guns out of the wrong hands.
WALLACE: And the Second Amendment includes an individual right to bear arms.
CLINTON: Yes, but that right like every other of our rights, our First Amendment rights, every right that we have is open to and even subject to reasonable regulations.
WALLACE: I just want to pursue this a bit. Because, Heller — Justice Scalia, he said that the right to bear arms is reasonably limited. He let the door open to regulation. If you're elected president, you're going to appoint the Ninth Supreme Court justice.
CLINTON: Um-hmm.
WALLACE: Are you saying you do not want to see the Heller decision, the individual right to bear arms, overturned?
CLINTON: No, I don't, but here's what I do want. And I want to be very clear about this: I want the Congress to step up and do its job. I want to get out of the horrible cycle we're in, where we go and mourn dozens, hundreds, thousands of people killed by gun violence.
Everybody says, "Oh, let's pray, let's, y'know send our hearts and our feelings," and then nothing happens. We're better than this. The gun lobby intimidates elected officials. The vast majority of Americans, including gun owners, support the kind of common-sense reforms that I’m proposing.
If it were really true that the "vast majority of Americans" agree with what Mrs. Clinton wants, elected officials would carry out their will. The "gun lobby" makes sure that elected officials know that they have the majority of the American people on their side, which explains why politicians in contested elections have found support for gun control, code-named "common-sense reforms" for the naive, dangerous to their continuation in office.
I should amend the previous sentence because, as seen in the opening 35 seconds of the following undercover video Project Veritas, the left and its adherents in the establishment press fully understand that when one of their own talks about "common sense gun legislation," they are really describing an intermediate step towards banning all guns.
The video shows an undercover Project Veritas journalist interviewing, in a pretend-sympathetic manner, alternate Hillary Clinton delegate Mary Bayer, who exposes the understood agenda:
Transcript (opening 35 seconds):
UNDERCOVER PROJECT VERITAS JOURNALIST: Well we can't say we want to ban guns Can we do that? We got to hide that.
MARY BAYER: No, right. You got to say you want "common sense gun legislation."
PV JOURNALIST: Then bait and switch them and ban them all. But Hillary would support banning guns, right?
MARY BAYER: For sure.
PV JOURNALIST: Yeah, I didn't know what her position was.
MARY BAYER: Yeah, I think, well, she doesn't take any positions that are too terribly extreme, and I think —
PV JOURNALIST: In public — publicly.
MARY BAYER: Right. You have to take that sort of moderate, "We just wanna have common sense legislation so our children are safe."
PV JOURNALIST: Yeah.
MARY BAYER: You say sh*t like that and then people will buy into it.
PV JOURNALIST: All right!
Leaving no conceivable doubt, during the longer presentation of the interview, which goes from 2:38 to 5:11, at the 3:18 mark, Bayer is asked, "Do you support banning guns?" Her enthusiastic answer, "Oh yeah."
Bayer's knowledge of what leftist candidates' real goals are clearly, and with full justification, extends to Hillary Clinton. We know that's the case beyond doubt with Mrs. Clinton because she let the mask slip last year.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
