Debate Magazine

Hillary and the 2A Came up in the 3rd Presidential Debate

Posted on the 20 October 2016 by Doggone
I have long contended that unless and until we have consensus by proof of what is and is not factual, we won't have any functional unity.  I don't want to see us continue to become increasingly dysfunctional as a nation.
Lies fuel extremism.  Lies fuel fears.  Both quotes in the graphic below are FALSE.
I fact checked the graphic below after finding it on the FB page of someone who expressed an alarming degree of hatred for Hillary.  I am confident that the reasons this person has for his emotions are ALL as false as the image below, which I took from his FB page.
Images like this keep popping up on right wing posts on social media. It is false. But it goes a long way towards explaining the poorly informed right wing response of boos when Hillary CORRECTLY stated her FACTUAL position on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- a document she knows well and understands thoroughly.
We have a serious problem with gun violence; our rates are 25 times higher, especially gun violence involving either child victims and/or child shooters.  So long as one side of the issue refuses to be factually accurate, we can't do anything to successfully resolve this public health issue.
Hillary and the 2A came up in the 3rd presidential debate
Here is what is wrong with the above image; it is entirely FAKE. Because conservatives LIE when the facts are not on their side; and this is one more example of it.
From Politifact Iowa:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton explicitly stated her plans to "shut down" the National Rifle Association and expressed hope at banning handguns in an interview with The Des Moines Register last summer. At least, that’s according to a viral image that first cropped up on an anti-Clinton Tumblr blog and has been shared widely on Facebook. "I will get the NRA shut down for good if I become president. If we can ban handguns, we will do it," the post quotes Clinton as telling the Register on Aug. 8, 2015.
But here’s the thing: The quote is wholly fabricated. Clinton was never quoted in the Register making that statement, and it appears she has not made such a statement anywhere else.
Clinton campaigned heavily in Iowa throughout the summer and fall of 2015, and Register reporters and the paper’s editorial board interviewed her several times. But she was not in Iowa on Aug. 8, when she allegedly made the statement. Clinton’s first visit to Iowa in the month of August occurred on Aug. 14, followed by public events on Aug. 15 and Aug. 26.
A review of the Register’s archives show Clinton was neither interviewed nor quoted directly on Aug. 8 or in the days immediately following.
Clinton did make several statements regarding gun control on the Iowa campaign trail that were covered by the Register. In all of them, she laid out an agenda that calls for broader background-check requirements, including sales at gun shows, as well as stronger measures to prevent gun purchases by domestic abusers and people with serious mental health problems.
"I'm going to speak out against the uncontrollable use of guns in our country because I believe we can do better than that," Clinton said in Iowa in July. "A majority of Americans and a majority of gun owners agree with universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and people who are mentally unstable and even terrorists."
On Aug. 26 in Ankeny, she responded to the on-air murders of a news crew in Virginia:
"We've got to do something. It's a very difficult political issue. But we are smart enough, compassionate enough to balance legitimate Second Amendment rights concerns with preventive measures and control measures, so whatever motivated this murderer ... we will not see more needless, senseless deaths," she said.
She went on,  "If guns weren't so readily available, if we had universal background checks, if we could put some time out between the person who got fired, or domestic abuse, or whatever other motivation ... maybe we could prevent this kind of carnage."
On Oct. 6, she described her views again, in response to a mass shooting in Oregon: "I feel like this is unfinished business in our country, and I am very determined that we are going to try to bring some sanity back, so that people's Second Amendment rights are protected — but they are not absolute, the way the NRA wants them to be," Clinton said at an event in Davenport. "There are common-sense ways to make sure people are not using guns to commit mass murders."
Gun control came up again at an event in Sioux City on Dec. 4, after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. At that time, she expressed support for banning gun sales to people on federal "no-fly" lists.
"I think we've got to be more willing to start imposing these kinds of gun-safety measures," Clinton said. "I'm certainly going to continue advocating for them."
Internet searches for the quote found on the image refer only to the image itself — not to any original reporting from the Des Moines Register, another news outlet or to raw audio or video. Evidence of the quote does not appear to exist beyond what was originally posted on Tumblr.

And from separate fact checking at Politifact.com (which I also verified by the defacto George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon):
[Face Book Meme, Feb. 16, 2015] Say George Washington said that "when government takes away citizens’ right to bear arms it becomes citizens’ duty to take away government’s right to govern." — Facebook posts on Monday, February 16th, 2015 in a meme on social media Did George Washington offer support for individual gun rights, as meme says? False Facebook posts Say George Washington said that "when government takes away citizens’ right to bear arms it becomes citizens’ duty to take away government’s right to govern." — Facebook posts on Monday, February 16th, 2015 in a meme on social media Did George Washington offer support for individual gun rights, as meme says? By Audrey Bowler on Friday, February 20th, 2015 at 8:56 a.m.
A reader sent us this meme about George Washington and gun rights. Did the first president really say that? Would George Washington have been an ally to modern-day gun-rights groups? A social-media meme suggests that he would have. Around the time of Washington’s 282nd birthday, a reader sent us the meme, which includes a painting of Washington and a quote purportedly written or uttered by the nation’s first president: "When government takes away citizens’ right to bear arms it becomes citizens’ duty to take away government’s right to govern."
But are those really Washington’s words? We contacted Edward Lengel, editor in chief of the Papers of George Washington project at the University of Virginia. He said "there is no evidence that Washington ever wrote or said these words, or any like them."
Lengel cautioned that it’s impossible to prove a negative, but he added that he’s "as certain as he can be" that the quote did not originate from George Washington. This is not the first time a similar claim has popped onto our radar screen. In December 2012, PolitiFact Texas rated False a claim made two days after the Newtown elementary school shooting.
When U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, appeared on Fox News Sunday, he was asked why he believed ordinary Americans should be able to buy semi-automatic weapons designed for military use. Gohmert answered in part, "For the reason George Washington said a free people should be an armed people. It ensures against the tyranny of the government." PolitiFact Texas contacted Gohmert’s office to seek details on the Washington quotation but didn’t hear back. The closest statement they could find was one Washington made in his first State of the Union address on Jan. 8, 1790: "A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined." The academic consensus is that Washington was referring to a trained militia to defend the new nation, rather than anticipating citizens seeking to head off perceived governmental tyranny. Ron Chernow, whose Washington: A Life won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for biography, told PolitiFact Texas that Washington was "talking about national defense policy, not individuals arming themselves, and the need for national self-sufficiency in creating military supplies." Some post-Revolutionary lawmakers did expect citizens to own firearms, but Washington does not appear to have been among them, experts said. "The idea of resistance to tyranny being dependent on a nation of gun-wielding individuals acting at their own behest or even on local initiative would have been anathema to Washington," Lengel told PolitiFact Texas. "Indeed, during the (Revolutionary) war he very frequently lamented the crimes carried out by armed civilians or undisciplined militia against their unarmed neighbors. The solution to these crimes, as he understood it, was to increase the power of the government and the army to prevent and punish them -- not to put more guns in the hands of civilians." Indeed, during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, "citizens of Western Pennsylvania rose up to fight a new tax on the whiskey they produced," said Mary Thompson, research historian at Washington’s Virginia home, Mount Vernon. Washington was "concerned that success by the rebels would lead to a diminishment of the central/federal government," and directed state militias to counter the insurrection -- "citizen-soldiers," she said, "acting on behalf of the government against their fellow citizens."

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