Wednesday’s final presidential debate will focus on six topics including one that has had Second Amendment advocates on edge for months: The U.S. Supreme Court.
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton’s now-infamous remark that the Supreme Court “is wrong” on the Second Amendment has not been forgotten. Republican nominee Donald Trump’s promise to protect the Second Amendment is also not lost on gun rights activists.
It is an important consideration, with gun control being a cornerstone of Clinton’s campaign, and polling that shows she has a lead over Trump in terms of probable Electoral College votes. Depending upon the poll, Clinton enjoys a lead that might range to 7-8 percent, though today’s Los Angeles Times has Trump ahead 44.9 percent to Clinton’s 43.3 percent. Temper that with Rasmussen’s daily roundup has Clinton with a slight lead at 42-41 percent.
Meanwhile, the ongoing slaughter in Chicago creates the perfect backdrop for a discussion of gun rights versus gun control. The Chicago Sun Times reported that the past weekend saw nine murders and another 40 people wounded in shootings across the Windy City between Friday evening and Monday morning.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
This is the kind of carnage gun prohibitionists exploit to push their agenda. It is also a testament to the failure of gun control as preached by Clinton and the man she hopes to replace, Barack Obama. There is no small irony in the fact that Obama considers Chicago his hometown, and that his political career began there.
A Clinton victory would assure that the conservative seat left vacant on the high court with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this year would be filled by someone of a far different judicial philosophy. At that point, both the 2008 Heller ruling and 2010 McDonald decision that upheld the Second Amendment as protective of an individual fundamental civil right could be in jeopardy.
Add to that the certainty that Clinton would appoint liberals to the lower federal courts and the next generation might become a bleak landscape where the right to keep and bear arms is concerned.
Of course, the only poll that really counts is the one on Nov. 8. Wednesday evening’s debate is a “must win” event for Trump, who has slipped in the polls since an audio of him making comments about women surfaced earlier this month, just before the second debate about 12 days ago.
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