Donald Trump on Guns

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(A version of this column appears in the May 10 edition of “Firearms News,” formerly “Shotgun News,” on newsstands this week.)

I dare say Donald Trump has flaws that may come back to haunt him -– or us. But there’s no mistaking the appeal of his straight-from-the-hip talk.

On health care, he says he’s “evolved” and no longer favors single-payer socialized medicine, which has been a disaster in England and Canada (see this) and which eventually has to lead to rationing and appalling degeneration on the Soviet model (check here.)

Mr. Trump now says he wants something more like a free market in health insurance, without state-by-state monopolies, so companies could bid and sell across state lines. Fine with me, especially if they’d also get rid of a lot of the Politically Correct “mandated coverages” that drive premiums sky-high. (I think most Americans still consider sex change operations “elective.”)

And while I still worry that Trump might turn out to be a protectionist on trade (the Smoot-Hawley Tariff helped create the worldwide Great Depression, after all), you couldn’t get much simpler than his stance on immigration: “A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border,” and “A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.”

“Mexico . . . relies heavily on the billions of dollars in remittances sent from illegal immigrants in the United States back to Mexico ($22 billion in 2013 alone),” Mr. Trump continues, at his official web site. “The Mexican government has taken the United States to the cleaners. . . . The cost of building a permanent border wall pales mightily in comparison to what American taxpayers spend every single year on dealing with the fallout of illegal immigration on their communities, schools and unemployment offices. Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages.”

Trump favors the mandatory return of all criminal aliens (a good start), complaining “The Obama Administration has released 76,000 aliens from its custody with criminal convictions since 2013 alone.” Furthermore, “Illegal aliens apprehended crossing the border must be detained until they are sent home, no more catch-and-release.”

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Most significantly, Trump wants to end birthright citizenship, a position which the American populace supports, two-to-one. And no, we shouldn’t need a constitutional amendment. The folks who wrote the 14th Amendment wanted birthright citizenship for the children of slaves, not the children of illegal immigrants, who have never properly placed themselves “under the jurisdiction” of the United States.

The Same Old War on Drugs

Big problems remain. I doubt Mr. Trump would shrink government overall — a correction so far past due it’s almost too late. He sure doesn’t sound like he wants Washington to stop treating most of the land area of the Western states like one big Petrie dish, a big mold culture in the EPA’s experiment to force humans off the land and into supervised urban rat warrens.

But my biggest problem with The Donald — not that he’s unique in this — is that he still insists current prison sentences for “drug dealers” amount to their being “given a slap on the wrist and turned loose on the street,” which, he says, “needs to stop.”
Really?

Yes, I understand the appeal of the “no-nonsense outsider” talking like a tough guy. It’s pretty entertaining to watch the panic of the established political class as all their trained mumblers with their memorized sound-bites stand there with jaws agape, wondering what hit ’em.

But the fact is, we’ve got two million people in prison in this country – the highest incarceration rate in the world (OK, except for the tiny Seychelle Islands, which locked up 735 people out of a population of 90,000 in 2014.) And at least half those people – more than a million – are serving time for drugs. That means a million Americans who’ve never raped or robbed or shot anybody are serving horrendous, barbaric prison sentences of scores or even hundreds of years for nothing more than possessing or growing or transporting plant derivatives that are far less harmful to their users (or to society as a whole) than alcohol – now advertised on TV in wide-mouth 12-packs.

We’ve got people in prison essentially for life for growing or manufacturing or selling non-addictive plants or chemicals to willing consumers who want to temporarily alter their state of consciousness, something that mankind — including sincere religious teachers — has been doing for tens of thousands of years. That’s nuts.

American prisons have become a growth industry, and we’re close to becoming a police state, complete with tax-paid spies and snitches. Our cops are now armed and equipped like para-military forces, busting down doors in the middle of the night with impunity, never paying a penny or spending a day in jail even when they pick the wrong house and murder innocent, law-abiding Americans in their beds (or, for that matter, when they murder “guilty” unarmed young Americans kneeling in front of their toilets trying to flush away a pitiful ounce of pot. For this they deserve to die?)

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Why? Our cities have become frightening war zones all because of this fruitless, counterproductive, vastly expensive “war on drugs.” Cancer victims lie writhing in under-medicated pain because doctors are afraid of having their licenses pulled for prescribing “too many” pain relievers, and meanwhile a whole criminal subculture has been created, breaking into our homes and cars and stealing our stuff to feed habits that would only cost pocket change if we went back to the pre-1916 status quo, when all this stuff was perfectly legal.

And on top of it all, no one can find anywhere in our federal or in any state Constitution where any government in America is delegated the specific power to ban or restrict what plant extracts we choose to use in the privacy of our homes.

Mr. Trump also joins with the NRA in demanding we “enforce all the gun laws on the books.” Well pardon me, but most of the gun laws “now on the books” are unconstitutional. Any honest court would throw ’em all out.

But having said all that, listening to Donald Trump on gun control can certainly be refreshing.

Straight Talk on Guns

At his official web site, https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/second-amendment-rights , we’re told: “The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period. . . . The Constitution doesn’t create that right — it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.”

(Actually, the Second Amendment speaks of a militia being necessary for “the security of a free state.” So yes, the Founders certainly did mean the Confederate militias had to remain armed so they could “defend themselves” against any northern invasion. If you include that kind of “self-defense,” I’m with you. And of course that’s the great irony of a character like Barack Obama — who actually claims to have been a professor of Constitutional Law — arguing that Americans have no right to own “military-style weapons.”)

“Here’s another important way to fight crime,” The Donald continues: “empower law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves. Law enforcement is great, they do a tremendous job, but they can’t be everywhere all of the time. Our personal protection is ultimately up to us. That’s why I’m a gun owner, that’s why I have a concealed carry permit, and that’s why tens of millions of Americans have concealed carry permits as well.”

A little hard to imagine Hillary Clinton talking like that, isn’t it?

Gun and magazine bans? They’re “a total failure,” sayeth Mr. Trump. “That’s been proven every time it’s been tried. Opponents of gun rights try to come up with scary sounding phrases like ‘assault weapons’, ‘military-style weapons’ and ‘high capacity magazines’ to confuse people. What they’re really talking about are popular semi-automatic rifles and standard magazines that are owned by tens of millions of Americans. Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice. The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own.”

I agree. I only hope he really means it.

The right to carry? “The right of self-defense doesn’t stop at the end of your driveway,” sayeth Mr. Trump. “That’s why I have a concealed carry permit and why tens of millions of Americans do too. That permit should be valid in all 50 states. A driver’s license works in every state, so it’s common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state. . . .

Military bases and recruiting centers? “Banning our military from carrying firearms on bases and at recruiting centers is ridiculous. We train our military how to safely and responsibly use firearms, but our current policies leave them defenseless. To make America great again, we need a strong military. To have a strong military, we need to allow them to defend themselves.”

Which was the status quo till the Clintons first took office, of course. One of the first priorities of Mrs. President Clinton and the First Gentleman, back in 1993 – right up there with burning the Branch Davidian women and children — was disarming members of the Armed Forces on our military bases and at our recruiting stations.

Once upon a time, American elections were about straight talk. Is it possible they could be, again?

Vin Suprynowicz, author of “Send in the Waco Killers,” was for 20 years an award-winning editorial writer at the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal. His latest novels about the War on Drugs are “The Testament of James” and “The Miskatonic Manuscript,” available online.

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6 Comments to “Donald Trump on Guns”

  1. MamaLiberty Says:

    I think the wind is going to blow mighty hard, mighty soon… no matter who is “elected.”

  2. Leslie Fish Says:

    Even if The Donald wins the Republican nomination, it won’t matter. The fix is in, the DNC’s years-long plan is at work, and Hilary will be the next POTUS — unless something totally weird happens, like an undeniable (and undisguisable) landslide for Bernie. All we can hope for is to also elect an anything-but-Democrat congress, in hopes it will put the brakes on Hillary’s tendency to use the Constitution for toilet paper.

    Why would Bernie be better? First, he calls himself a “socialist”, but from his voting record, he really isn’t. Second, coming from the second most gun-friendly state in the union (Vermont), he’s seen that more guns equal less crime. Third, he has *shown himself willing to listen to the citizens’ complaints* and trim his policies accordingly. Those put him miles ahead of Hillary on the libertarian scale.

    As for an anything-but-Democrat congress: there are signs that the populace is disgusted with both of the Big Two parties. Here in Arizona alone, the number of people registered to vote Libertarian or Independent is larger than the number registered Republican and Democrat combined. (Yes, I’m one of them.) That’s enough to give us a good number of congresscritters who aren’t beholden to either of the Big Two parties. We might even get a Libertarian or Independent senator or two.

    Cross fingers, but don’t count on Trump.

  3. Vin Suprynowicz on Trump, Guns, Immigration, and Other Issues Says:

    […] I dare say Donald Trump has flaws that may come back to haunt him -– or us. But there’s no mistaking the appeal of his straight-from-the-hip talk. On health care, he says he’s “evolved” and no longer favors single-payer socialized medicine, which has been a disaster in England and Canada (see this) and which eventually has to lead to rationing and appalling degeneration on the Soviet model (check here.) Mr. Trump now says he wants something more like a free market in health insurance, without state-by-state monopolies, so companies could bid and sell across state lines. Fine with me, especially if they’d also get rid of a lot of the Politically Correct “mandated coverages” that drive premiums sky-high. (I think most Americans still consider sex change operations “elective.”) And while I still worry that Trump might turn out to be a protectionist on trade (the Smoot-Hawley Tariff helped create the worldwide Great Depression, after all), you couldn’t get much simpler than his stance on immigration: “A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border,” and “A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.” “Mexico . . . relies heavily on the billions of dollars in remittances sent from illegal immigrants in the United States back to Mexico ($22 billion in 2013 alone),” Mr. Trump continues, at his official web site. “The Mexican government has taken the United States to the cleaners. . . . The cost of building a permanent border wall pales mightily in comparison to what American taxpayers spend every single year on dealing with the fallout of illegal immigration on their communities, schools and unemployment offices. Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages.” Trump favors the mandatory return of all criminal aliens (a good start), complaining “The Obama Administration has released 76,000 aliens from its custody with criminal convictions since 2013 alone.” Furthermore, “Illegal aliens apprehended crossing the border must be detained until they are sent home, no more catch-and-release.” Most significantly, Trump wants to end birthright citizenship, a position which the American populace supports, two-to-one. And no, we shouldn’t need a constitutional amendment. The folks who wrote the 14th Amendment wanted birthright citizenship for the children of slaves, not the children of illegal immigrants, who have never properly placed themselves “under the jurisdiction” of the United States. Read the rest here: https://vinsuprynowicz.com/?p=3019 […]

  4. MamaLiberty Says:

    I have never, and never will, put myself “under the jurisdiction of the United States,” or any involuntary government. I simply don’t recognize their “authority” to determine my life for any reason.

    Where would you suggest I be deported? I was born here, but not as a “citizen” slave subject to anyone. 🙂

    If someone is an aggressor, harming others, they should be treated as any other actual criminal. Otherwise, they are just people, human beings, individuals.

    “A nation without borders is not a nation.”

    And that would be a very good thing. We are a nation of captive servants to a monster of tyranny and control calling itself a “nation.” Far better to have a truly free market and a free country. Individual liberty is completely incompatible with involuntary government and border walls.

  5. BillMiller Says:

    I see your point, MamaLiberty. On the other hand, open borders are incompatible with the welfare state. The onslaught of arriving immigrants means more tax-slaves rowing the ship of state in a leftward direction, and more mouth-breathers making claims upon the hi-jacked paychecks of American workers. While I denounce the GOP and all its works, I must confess that I dread the future prospect of an ever more socialist Democratic Party locking in its permanent one-party national prominence by importing more future voters with a penchant for socialism.

    I wish I knew what the answer was. Or rather, I know the answer; I just wish I knew how to get there.

  6. Leslie Fish Says:

    The first step is to stop *all* legal immigration for at least 5 years. The second is to repeal NAFTA. The third is to close the borders and patrol them efficiently. The fourth is to round up the illegals and send them home — oh, not empty-handed: let them take with them all the goodies they got and the money they made here in goodie-land, and even give each of them a parting-gift: a sturdy large-caliber revolver, several boxes of fitting ammunition, a cleaning-kit, and a profusely-illustrated instruction book written in Spanish, Arabic, French and Chinese. That way, they’d have grubstakes to set them up when they get home, and an efficient means of protecting the same. They might even improve things considerably in their source-country when they get there.