Hillary Clinton argued Wednesday night that her opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2008 that individuals have a right to possess a firearm within the home doesn’t necessarily mean she’s anti-Second Amendment.
Rather, she said during the final presidential debate, she is merely in favor of tougher gun control legislation.
“I support the Second Amendment,” she said, adding, “But I also believe there can be and must be reasonable regulation.”
“Because I support the Second Amendment doesn’t mean that I want people who shouldn’t have guns to be able to threaten you, kill you or members of your family,” she added. “I think we need comprehensive background checks. We need to close the online loophole. Close the gun show loophole. There are other matters that I think are sensible.”
Clinton commented specifically on her opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the District of Columbia v. Heller case, which she said was about protecting “toddlers from gun.”
“I was upset [about the ruling] because, unfortunately, dozens of toddlers injure themselves, even kill people with guns, because, unfortunately, not everyone who has loaded guns in their homes takes appropriate precautions,” she said.
The Heller ruling makes zero mention of toddlers.
Clinton continued Wednesday evening, and said, “I disagreed with the way the court applied the Second Amendment in that case.
“I see no conflict between saving people’s lives and defending the Second amendment,” she added. “There’s no doubt that I respect the Second Amendment, that I also believe there’s an individual right to bear arms. That is not in conflict with sensible common sense regulation.”
The issue of gun control has been an ongoing theme in the Clinton campaign. The Democratic nominee vowed, for example, at the second presidential debate that she would nominate Supreme Court justices who agree with her on the need for stricter gun laws.
“I respect the Second Amendment, but I believe that there should be comprehensive background checks,” Clinton said. “And we should close the gun show loophole and close the online loophole we have to save as many lives as we possibly can.”
Her remarks came in response to the specific question: “What would you prioritize as the most important aspect of selecting a Supreme Court justice?”
Clinton added she believes the current court has “gone in the wrong direction.”
During the first presidential debate, she said stricter gun control measures could go a long way toward healing race relations.
“[W]e’ve got to get guns out of the hands of people who should not have them,” Clinton said. “The gun epidemic is the leading cause of death of young African-American men, more than the next nine causes put together.
“So we have to do two things,” she added. “We have to restore trust, we have to work with the police, we have to make sure they respect the communities and the communities respect them and we have to tackle the plague of gun violence, which is a big contributor to a lot of the problems that we’re seeing today.”
Clinton also said in a recent interview that gun violence is as big of a problem for the United States as terrorism.
“[I]t’s not only terrorists we need to be worried about,” the Democratic nominee said in an interview published last week by AARP. “I’m looking at violence broadly. Terrorism is part of it, but gun violence kills 33,000 Americans a year… We’ve got to get serious about stemming violence and terrorism in every way we can.”
Her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., joins her in her call for tougher gun control measures.
“I’ve got a lot of scar tissue, because when I was governor of Virginia, there was a horrible shooting at Virginia Tech,” Kaine said during the vice presidential debate, referring to the 2007 mass-shooting event that claimed the lives of 32 people. “We can support the Second Amendment and do things like background record checks and make us safer, and that will make police safer, too.”
