Dave Hardy went to the Clinton Archives to look for gun control records. Last month he reported some staggering information:

A fax from Jody Powell, President Jimmy Carter’s press secretary, to George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton’s new press secretary, warning Clinton to back off from gun control because … it just doesn’t work.

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We have yet to propose anything that people think will make any difference. The people who are generally for gun control don’t make it a voting issue because it has no real impact on their lives. On the other hand, the inconvenience and hassle of wading through another round with indifferent and incompetent bureaucrats and the fear that this is only the first step toward more radical measures are quite real to people who own guns.” 

Then came the real bombshell:

“Much as I hate to say it, the NRA is effective primarily because it is largely right when it claims that most gun control measures inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime and criminals.”

This month he reports on the Brady Campaign wish list:

The Brady Campaign has long claimed that its agenda is limited. Just some “reasonable, common-sense” gun restrictions—no need for anyone to worry about confiscation or onerous regulations.

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The White House files were filled with Brady Campaign/Handgun Control Inc.’s legislative plans. A memo stamped “confidential—do not circulate” (with the label set out by images of skulls and crossbones) outlined Brady’s real agenda. 

It began with a list of what Brady wanted from the Clinton administration. The list was long, but mostly quite predictable: licensing requirements and registration for handgun ownership, a ban on “assault rifles,” “one-gun-a-month,” a seven-day waiting period, and stiff increases in fees (to $1,000 per year) for FFLs. 

Even that would not be enough to please the Brady Campaign, though. Its memo added some proposals that (until now) have never seen the light of day. 

Brady also asked for a federal requirement of a special “arsenal license” for any gun owner who possessed 20 guns or 1,000 rounds of ammunition. (The White House copy has a handwritten note: “all guns.”) The memo described the arsenal license’s requirements as “similar to the requirements for a machine gun license,” including the requirement for police approval, since “anyone who has an arsenal is a danger to society.” In this scenario, two bricks of .22s would be enough for a gun owner to be treated as a public menace. 

Brady also asked that each component of a handgun, including the “barrel, stock, receiver, any part of the action, or ammunition magazines” be treated as if they were the receiver. “Buyers would need a license, sellers would need an FFL, and interstate sales would be illegal,” Brady explained. Replacing the grips or a firing pin spring, or purchasing an extra magazine, would actually require a 4473. Apparently they consider handguns to be that dangerous! 

Incredibly, Brady also wanted a ban on manufacturing magazines that held more than six rounds, and a requirement that transfers of used seven-round and larger magazines have law enforcement approval. Essentially, nearly every magazine in the United States, apart from those for some pocket guns and deer rifles, would be banned if new, or tightly restricted if already in existence.

It’s all just common sense… if your goal is to eliminate the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

Here is a November 29, 2015 picture of Brady Center president Dan Gross (left) and New York Governor (and New York SAFE Act author) Andrew Cuomo (right) as they present Hillary Clinton with the Mario M. Cuomo Visionary Award for her leadership on gun control:

If Hillary wins the November election the supreme court candidates she picks will neuter the Second Amendment.

Sebastian has some comments on the Clinton files as well.

From CNN, Gun control groups emphasize suicides in bid for more public support:

In years past, gun control advocates focused almost exclusively on homicides, whether the mass shootings covered intensively by the national media or the inner-city murders that are a staple of the late local news. Now, groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, as well as public health researchers, are starting to emphasize suicides.

The shift is part of a broader change in looking at gun violence as more of a public health issue and less of a matter of crime.

“When criminologists focus on guns, they focus on crime,” said David Hemenway a professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “What we’ve been trying to say is that a person is dead whether or not someone else shot them, they were shot by accident or they shot themselves on purpose.”

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Zimring said that by putting the focus on victims who are their relatives and neighbors, gun control advocates hope to get the attention of these “apathetic” suburban voters.

“It’s a politically sophisticated way to change the nature of the debate,” he said. “The point is not to increase the percentage of support, but to increase the intensity of support. It’s not to make more people support gun control. It’s to make them care about it.”

I used to play a lot of tennis. There was a “rule” my instructors drilled into me, “Never change a winning strategy, always change a losing strategy.” This same rule is applicable to a lot of endeavors. This includes politics.

Gun control people are losing their war on guns and they know they need to change their strategy. It’s a little subtle but I find the statement “When criminologists focus on guns, they focus on crime” very telling. They know criminological data does not support the case for gun control and they need to change the focus of their attack on our rights. The Heller decision blunted many of the gun control by “principle” (such as “civilized people don’t own guns”) and conformance with “other advanced countries”. The mass shootings excuse for infringement is falling flat because any rational person recognizes that the best way to stop such an attack is exactly what the NRA says, “A good guy with a gun.”

What do they have left? They only have suicides as a possible weapon against us. There is a reason this has not been used much in the past. It’s because it too has fallen flat when it has been attempted. In debates with anti-gun people in the past I have never had them try to defend suicide by gun as a valid reason to place restrictions on the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. And people in the middle will dismiss it even quicker. This is the anti-gun conspirators last ditch tool of desperation and it will fail just as it has in the past.