The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette charged writer Chris Potter with examining the factuality of the NRA ad above. Specifically, the assertion that “Hillary Clinton could take away [your] right to self-defense. And with Supreme Court justices, Hillary can.” Here at The Truth About Guns, that’s slam dunk.

As we pointed out back in the day, the Supreme Court’s Heller and McDonald decisions — striking down D.C.’s handgun ban and affirming that Second Amendment protections trump local and state law — contain a fatal flaw. Wikipedia:

The majority decision also reaffirmed that certain firearms restrictions mentioned in District of Columbia v. Heller are assumed permissible and not directly dealt with in this case. Such restrictions include those to “prohibit…the possession of firearms by felons or mentally ill” and “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

As we predicted, lower courts have exploited this so-called “reasonable regulations” loophole to enable the ongoing degradation and destruction of Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. For example, California’s Prop 63.

Unless and until the Supreme Court excludes carry laws, assault weapons bans, bans on “high capacity” ammunition magazines, etc. from “reasonable regulations,” American gun rights in anti-gun strongholds remain tenuous. With a four – four split amongst Justices, the next appointee — and further appointees — will swing the balance one way or the other.

Bottom line: the Heller and McDonald decisions don’t have to be overturned for local, state and federal governments to “take away [your] right to self-defense” — as they continue to do under the rulings. The highest court in the land (excluding Denver) could simply let these laws stand, viewing all gun rights infringements as “reasonable regulations.”

That’s a fact that even the Gazette can’t ignore. Or can it?

A Clinton Supreme Court appointee could reverse Heller, potentially changing the legal balance in some cases. But it would take almost certainly take more than a Supreme Court pick to disarm gun owners … and the power of the NRA.

Potter is suggesting that the NRA is claiming that various governments want to forcibly disarm gun owners. While that’s always a possibility, the nub of the matter is that unconstitutional gun control laws (i.e., all of them) disarm gun owners. Or more accurately, continue to disarm Americans.

You want proof? As our good friends at The Trace report . . .

Los Angeles, which requires “convincing evidence of a clear and present danger to life,” has just 496 licensed carriers among its 10 million residents. San Francisco makes it nearly impossible to acquire a permit — only four people there have conceal carry licenses.

Even under Heller and McDonald, LA and SF continue to deny citizens their Constitutionally protected gun rights.

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And yet The Gazette reckons the NRA ad’s claim is “very wobbly.” Go figure.

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49 COMMENTS

  1. It’s so simple. Hillary stated that the Supreme Court was wrong on the Heller decision. The Heller decision was brought about because a person couldn’t even have a firearm within their own home for self defense in DC. And Hillary is against the Heller decision. This AD is perfectly spot on, given Hillary’s statements.

  2. It does bring to mind a question I’ve only occasionally seen here on TTAG, why is it we never believe anything a liberal is saying until they talk about infringing our civil rights; and then we take them completely at their word? Are we guilty of cherry-picking?

    • Maybe because we tend to believe their talk when they start to walk it?
      Here is a quote for you to ponder:
      ‘When my mom becomes president, we’ll be able to get rid of the guns’.
      –Chelsea Clinton

    • Why wouldn’t you believe them after all the gun control legislation they have passed or proposed? We’re talking about one of the people responsible for the assault weapon ban.

    • It’s not that we’re cherry picking. It’s that a liberal discussing taking away rights is making a statement against interest. That is, they’re saying something that doesn’t help them, so there’s built-in credibility thay otherwise would be lacking.

      Liberals know thay they cannot win nationally if they come right out and declare the totality of what they intend to do. That’s how you got Clinton campaigning as a “New Democrat” and that the era of big government was over. Then he tried to force Hillarycare down our throats in an attempt to snatch then-1/7 of the economy.

      That’s how you got Obama claiming that if you like your health plan you can keep it. Then Obamacare scrambled the market and millions lost their plans outright or got demoted to part time to avoid the insurance mandate.

      These things aren’t surprises to liberals. They’re happen by desire and design and as entirely foreseeable consequences. They just can’t divulge that up front or else the voters would revolt. That’s how you got the GOP Revolution in 1994, seizing both chambers of Congress for the first time in a half century. That’s how Obama got “shellacked” in 2010.

      The trick is to communicate your plans to your base voters, without tipping off the idiot undecideds or giving conservatives the tools to do so. That’s how you get candidates speaking in code and using “dog whistles” that only their side can pick up. Political discourse is rife with euphemisms that let their side know what’s up, without exposing yourself to blowback. Some examples:

      Immigration reform = amnesty

      Living wage = money grab from business

      Tax fairness = tax hikes on wealth creators, welfare payments to parasites

      Fair trade = Protectionism for inefficient, but politically connected industries

      Common sense gun regulations = civil disarmament

      • You are so spot on with this. I wanted to say that because often ppl don’t comment on posts that are comprehensive…and it’s nice to get a pat on the back. I think everyone’s nodding in agreement, but that’s hard to tell over the internet.

        Good work buddy.

        A working illustration of your point about how they can’t tell people their real intentions or how it’s really going to work would be the infamous Jonathan Gruber quote about how a 40% tax on companies is a 40% tax on the people getting services from that company. Gruber said that he knew that, John Kerry knew that, everybody knew that. It was common knowledge at the democrat strategy meetings. Then he laughed about it and said the American voter is too stupid to figure that out.

        If every democrat politician who has lied about just this specific issue had an aneurysm rupture today, there would be no democrats tomorrow.

  3. Nine, unelected people holding life terms can effectively re write the constitution. Something is wrong. “Oh, the second amendment is an individual right! Or it was… Now we decided that it isn’t.” makes a lot of sense.

  4. The Post-Gazette is a liberal rag. When I read it I expect it to slant a certain way. The Tribune Review slants conservative. Both, however, are always willing to place your letters to the editor.

  5. These people are naive if they don’t think that the wolf politicians in places like Chicago are salivating over the idea of Heller getting gutted in the courts so they can restore the bans they had in place.

    • And both are employees of one of the two police agencies, SFPD or SFSO. No “civilian” CCWs are issued, a policy that has been in place for the last three sheriffs. When DIFi got hers, she was required to go through the same course of training as a police officer, but that was a unique circumstance, and hers expired several decades ago. (California CCWs are only good for two years.) She probably would not qualify today.

      However, the fact that the police can unilaterally exercise their discretion to essentially deny all “common” citizens their individual fright to bear arms is the crux of the two appeals heard last Tuesday in D.C. Although the decision of the D.C. Circuit will have no effect outside that jurisdiction, as it will only decide whether a preliminary injunction barring the application of D.C.’s current highly restrictive standards, it may have influence on other circuits, other than the Ninth. The Ninth has already decided that there is no “right” to carry a concealed weapon (while ignoring the larger question of the right to open carry in a state that bans open carry).

  7. That NRA ad is so hilariously bad….

    Fear mongering or scaremongering is the deliberate use of fear based tactics including exaggeration and usually repetition to influence the public in order to achieve a desired outcome and that’s what this ad is.

    Oh God it’s honestly sad that people on here actually believe this BS.

    This propaganda is just stupid and unwarranted no single president has the power to ban weapons. I’m no fan of Hillary either, but I know she didn’t say, “I want to ban All guns, every single gun, no guns for anybody.

    Talk about more background checks and the NRA and TTAG goes into desperation mode.. sigh

    Here’s my favorite comment from a Youtuber on this video….

    The *censored* NRA has been terrifying dumb Hillbillies for decades. Figure it out, morons: they scare you, you buy lots and lots of guns, and the gun manufacturers make out like Bandits, then they give a little of that money to the NRA. It would be a vicious circle if it wasn’t so stupid. Every four years, the NRA scares you by telling you that this is the last chance you have to prevent government tyranny, oh my God, the sky is falling, and you idiots fall for it every time. pathetic. And now you’re going to vote for Donald Trump, a literal con man. How stupid can you get? Is this what comes from 10 generations of inbreeding?

    Australia has lower crime rate and hasn’t had a mass shooting since 1996. Your points is irrelevant.

    • Hillary scares me to death. Her overt campaign to mutilate our Constitution scares me even more.

      If you think that makes me an inbred hillbilly, well, believe that if you must.

      The thing is, inbred hillbillies have the same voting rights as mentally challenged socialists. See you at the polls.

    • You say “She doesn’t want to take all guns from everyone.” then you say that a country where guns are virtually illegal is better off than the U.S. I think that explains what your goals are quite nicely. Hers too, since she has pretty much praised the same countries.

      • I’d like to point out that the president can do nothing to get rid of the second amendment or pre existing gun laws

        You think a gun will protect you? What happens when the other guy has a gun too, and a bigger one at that, because you allowed him to freely purchase military grade assault rifles at his leisure? Also, having a gun doesn’t mean shit if you aren’t willing to kill the other person. Are you?

        • You must not have read the article. She can appoint a supreme court justice that could vote to change the Heller decision and effectively remove the second amendment as an individual right. That doesn’t immediately ban guns, but it opens the legal door. It permits every state or the federal government to pass whatever laws they like.

          Well, if they break into my house with a gun, then we’re getting in a gun fight… or maybe they’ll run away as soon as bullets start flying. I don’t know. There are a million scenarios that could happen. But I’m better off having one than not having one.

        • For a brief moment you may have had a decent argument, then you brought out the buzz words “military grade assault rifle” and lost all credibility.

        • You know it’s cliche But should someone uninvited enter my home, the police are only minutes away. In those minutes, rather than take the beating of my life I’d prefer to be at least equall with or preferably have an advantage over my adversary. Same theory the US military and law enforcement uses in confrontations. And yes, if you enter my home uninvited in the wee hours of the morning my assumption is you intend to do me and mine bodily harm, I will shoot to stop you, if that means killing you because you would not stop. So be it.

    • From a man in England where the right of lawful self defense was systematically removed from its citizens.

      Plenty of YouTube videos showing citizens being attacked by criminals in merry ole England.

    • You’ve come a ways in your trolling, I’ll give you credit, you’ve gotten better. I’m still convinced you’re a bored gun guy, though. This is mostly due to your relative lack of engagement with replies.

      • So how is me spouting facts and truths considered “trolling”.

        Your comment has nothing to do with this article and you are just trying to troll and derail the thread.

        I’ve just been saying that the NRA and TTAG has been saying the same bullshit about every democratic candidate for president for the past 20 years. But yeah, maybe if you keep it your money, you’ll eventually stop being afraid of your own shadow.

    • New Zealand, a country demographically similar ti Australia, hasn’t had a mass shooting in that time period, either, despite not having implemented civilian disarmament. Curious, that.

      While you think about that, think about this, spree shootings are statistically rare everywhere, even in the U.S. In Australia, their violent crime rate was already declining and had been for years before the Port Arthur shootings.

      So you have effect preceding cause in Australia, and effect with cause lacking in New Zealand. Kinda hard to credit gun control under those backwards circumstances, isn’t it?

      Also, this claim “Australia has lower crime rate and hasn’t had a mass shooting since 1996” is false. There have been several mass shootings there since 1996. See the Monash University Shootings, the Hectorville Siege, the Hunt Family murders, the Logan shooting, and the Sydney Siege.

      And whi says banning guns bans mass murder, the ostensible purpose of gun bans? Australia’s had a nasty rash of mass murderd since 1996 without guns. See the arson cases of the Childers Palace Backpackers fire, the Churchill Fire, the Quakers Nursing Home Fire, and the Cairns Child Killings (stabbings).

      Then you can come back and discuss this issue intelligently.

  8. There’s nothing to prevent our lawmakers from reclassifying what they deem as ‘safe’ distance from sensitive areas. Imagine the following:

    2016
    You cannot possess, carry, and/or store in your vehicle/house within 2 miles of any federal/state buildings, schools, and churches. Anyone not complying to this statue will be fined and/or subjected to 30 days house arrest.

    2017
    You cannot possess, carry, and/or store in your vehicle/house within 4 miles of any federal/state buildings, schools, and churches. Anyone not complying to this statue will be fined and/or subjected to 60 days house arrest.

    2018
    You cannot possess, carry, and/or store in your vehicle/house within 6 miles of any federal/state buildings, schools, and churches. Anyone not complying to this statue will be fined and/or subjected to 90 days house arrest.

    etc…

    Imagine the map of this expanding restrictions on “sensitive” area. Eventually, you wouldn’t be able to purchase or own a home well outside of this invisible safety bubble. With the density of buildings in SF, they can effective force all law-abiding people to remove their firearms outside of city limits.

    This isn’t a ban on firearms (cause you can still have them but not within X distance from sensitive areas), it’s for your safety.

    For us CA residents, everyday is educating the fence sitters. We are currently counting petitions to have Moonbeam veto the most recent anti-gun bills he signed a few months back. Our county, Alameda was horrible. On average we counted 2000-3000 signees per petition. We need more signatures.

    • Shameless propaganda by the NRA and this website. After 7.5 years, Obama has taken a whopping total of 0 guns from citizens. Hillary is not taking away anyone’s guns. Get over yourselves

      • As much of the propaganda as you believe ConcernedAmerican. If you were truly concerned, you too would be concerned about your freedom. If you were truly educated and enlightened, you too would be acknowledging that this isn’t about control over an inanimate object, it’s control over people.

        From your naming calling and factless finger pointing, you do not have the appropriate understanding of the issue.

        If you wanted to safe lives, then volunteer at your local Boys and Girls club and reach out to inner city kids. Reach out to gang members and change their thug-life attitude. At least, I don’t really believe you want to safe lives, you much prefer to call us names and point fingers at the millions of law-abiding people of this great nation and blame us for fanning the flames. When in fact the real issue is culture and people.

      • Wrong. Obama banned an entire class of Russian semi automatic rifkes that I certainly would have liked to buy.

  9. If liberals want to use the SCOTUS to overturn Heller and possibly McDonald, they’ll create a little problem for themselves.

    The SCOTUS has been very reluctant to ever revisit any prior decision of the court. Heck, it is two amendments to the Constitution that thwart the results of the Dredd Scott decision, not a case reversing it.

    Once they go down the road of reversing decisions, that means the court could do things like, oh, reverse or dissect Roe v. Wade and other cherished SCOTUS case law. The precedent against stare decisis will have been set, and it might become open season against left-wing judicial activism in the future.

    • Well, Chicago used to be safer before the handgun ban was overturned and concealed carry was legalized. Hey weren’t those things supposed to reduce street crime? Now everyone has full Second Amendment rights and the violent crime rate is rising in Chicago and nationwide.

      • The homicide rate in America is at a 50 year low, and homicides committed with firearms have been halved since the 1990’s. Your assertion that “gun crime” is rising nationwide is demonstrably false. Of course, literally every single point you try to make when you come to this website is false, and can be proven false with only a few minutes of research. I thought you might have been a gun guy trolling us based on your initial post on this topic, but after reading a few of your replies, the more likely scenario seems that you’re ignorant and arrogant, and that’s a particularly bad combination.

      • Here we go again blaming the law abiding for more crimes. Hello? Have it ever occurred to you that criminals are the ones doing the shooting? Or are you hedging that for every law abiding person is a criminal in hiding?

      • Chicago has high crime rates because of its historic love affair with criminal enterprises. Hunters, legal concealed carriers, and people who are otherwise “into owning guns” aren’t the ones contributing to those stats. Gang members and other assorted urban ghetto trash are responsible for the vast majority of deaths by firearm in this country. When you omit NYC, Chicago, LA, and DC (all blue cities with the strictest gun laws in the nation, btw), our rates match up with Finland.

  10. The next President will not only nominate one, two or three new SCOTUS justices, but also 400 federal district and circuit court judges.

    Since SCOTUS takes 80 cases a year and the lower courts take 400,000, I would suggest that we pay more attention to what will happen at the lower court levels. That’s where the real action is.

    Can this country stand another Democrat appointing insane SJWs to the federal bench? I don’t think so.

    • Spot on Ralph. It’s the other federal judges that are more scary. Not everyone has the money to take a case to a higher court to try and get a decision reversed.

    • 3-4 mil guns in America

      I thought all you “Good Guys” were out there patrolling the streets keeping everyone safe. That’s why we put up with the danger your gun ownership adds to our society, because you say it will keep us safe. . . what’s not working?

      This article and it’s ad is such bullshit. How is she going to change the second ammendment without help from the other two branches of government? Is she just going to pull it out of her ass?

      This is fear mongering 101. Better run and hide your guns and vote for a lying, narcissistic xenophobe who only cares about pissing his name on the side of the White house in gold paint!

      • I only see one fear monger here. It’s you ConcernedAmerican. You fear that guns kill people. You fear what you can’t control. You fear an inanimate object that on its own is just a lump of metal. You fear the many peaceful and law abiding people of this nation. You fear those who exercise our basic human right to defense and self preservation.

        How do I know you are a fear monger? Because you have systemically provided false talking points, points that is easily disputed with just a few minutes of searching.

    • How many cases never even enter the district courts because a SC ruling predetermined its outcome? Those must be counted, too, to gauge the full effect of the Supreme Court.

      Also, how many federal cases are essentially frivolous or formalities and end up with dismissal or summary judgment? Those must be excluded, so as not to inflate the impact of the lower courts.

      Finally, how many federal cases address some arcane, niche aspect of the law that 99.9% of us don’t know about, care about or will ever be impacted by?

      I get your point. The district and circuit courts are more numerous and closer to our lives, in general, than the SC is. Still, appointment for appointment, vote for vote, the SC is the greater prize.

  11. This discussion about a “study” of who owns what guns in America by our good friends at Harvard/Northeastern Universities here, http://www.activistpost.com/2016/09/designated-super-gun-owner-will-soon-targeted-disarmament.html, lays bare the very next vector of Executive overreach and state by state overreach from city councils, Attorney Generals, Mayors, Governors, Senators, Congresscritters, etc…

    This WILL be the way forward for the next 4 to 8 years under President Presumptive, “SUPER OWNERS” are designated as being 3% of all American gun owners, and are said to own 50% of all guns in the nation; owning 17 each. They will be the next infringed class, as the good old anti-gun rhetoric of, “who NEEDS so many guns” will make it’s newest return to the American media headlines and breaking news logo of cable propaganda channels.

    I hope Trump socks it to her on her abysmal record as a “human” being.

  12. Perhaps someone here could help. I recall at a democratic primary rally/town-hall in 07 or 08 where John Edwards, Obama, Clinton, and possibly a few others were talking about criminalizing handgun possession. I remember Clinton saying something to the effect of “we don’t have the votes right now”. Anyone recall this event?

  13. For every fact that shows the advantage for gun control some fact shows the opposite.

    Why waste all the time and effort. Let’s just bottom line it.

    I am willing to kill anyone to keep my right to have a gun. Are you willing to kill anyone to take that right away?

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