Pushed on her beliefs about the Second Amendment, Hillary Clinton defended her support of Washington, D.C.’s now defunct handgun ban as part of a larger effort to protect children from firearm-related accidents.
When asked her opposition to D.C. v. Heller, the landmark Supreme Court case overturning the ban, the Democrat said she “disagreed with the way the court applied the Second Amendment in that case.”
“Because what the District of Columbia was trying to do was protect toddlers from guns,” Clinton said. “They wanted people with guns to safely store them, and the court didn’t accept that reasonable regulation.”
While the D.C. City Council did cite “reducing the potentiality” of gun-related accidents as a chief motivation for the firearm ban, accidental gun fatalities in the District were rare at that time according to D.C.’s Department of Human Resources.
In the period immediately before and after the handgun ban went into effect, between 1974 and 1979, there was a grand total of five fatal home and occupational accidents.
Compare that to the last four years before the Supreme Court overturned the gun ban. Between 2005 and 2008, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, there were 99 child mortality homicides that involved a gun and only one unintentional firearm death.
Washington D.C.’s murder rate didn’t drop below triple digits until 2012.
Conservative pundits and politicians have been quick to point to laws like D.C.’s handgun ban as a root cause of violence. They argue that disarming citizens emboldens criminals. Trump echoed that argument Wednesday night pointing to Chicago’s murder rates as an example of failed firearm regulation.
“In Chicago, which has the toughest gun laws in the United States, probably you could say by far they have more gun violence than any other city,” Trump said. “So we have the toughest laws and you have tremendous gun violence.”
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
