Hillary, Guns, and Planned Parenthood - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Hillary, Guns, and Planned Parenthood
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Ya gotta hand it to Hillary. So gutsy.

As written up over there in Tucker Carlson’s the Daily Caller the headline of her boldness was put thusly: 

Hillary Clinton Blames NRA For Mass Shootings

But of course she does! Said Hillary:

“It is infuriating. Every time there is another massacre, Republicans and the NRA, ‘now is not the time to talk about guns.’ Yes it is. But more than talk, it is time to act. But Republicans keep refusing to do anything to protect our communities. They put the NRA ahead of American families. It is wrong and we need to make every politician who sides with them to look into the eyes of parents whose children have been murdered and explain why they listen to the gun lobbyists instead.”

The crowd broke out into cheers when Clinton said that it’s time to stand up to the gun lobby saying, “What is wrong with us that we can’t stand up to the NRA and the gun lobby and the gun manufacturers. This is not just tragic. We don’t just need to pray for people, we need to act. We need to build a movement.”

Ah, the political courage of this woman. So bold.

Unless, of course, one pipes up that maybe, just maybe, mass killings in America just might have something to do with the culturally induced lack of respect for the value of human life. You know, all those millions of abortions since 1973 and the recent revelations of the Planned Parenthood horrors. 

But when the “value of life” issue is on the table — where is Hillary? Where is President Obama? Where is any liberal? They instantly get their back up and race to the defense of unlimited abortion and Planned Parenthood faster than any Republican can blurt “NRA.” 

Why? Because, of course, unlimited abortion has become a virtual sacrament for the American Left. Simply put, unlimited abortion and Planned Parenthood are the left’s NRA in this debate. Under attack for those grossly disturbing videos revolving around the selling of “tissue” — i.e. baby parts — see how bravely Clinton reacted. Here’s the story in Politico:

Hillary Clinton comes out in support of Planned Parenthood

Hillary Clinton is making her position on Planned Parenthood very clear: She is in full support of the organization.

“I’m proud to stand with Planned Parenthood, I’ll never stop fighting to protect the ability and right of every woman in this country to make her own health decisions,” Clinton said in a video released Monday.

The video is the strongest statement on the organization to date from the 2016 Democratic front-runner.

Planned Parenthood has been under fire since a series of undercover videos were released by an anti-abortion advocacy group over the past few weeks.

The videos show doctors and Planned Parenthood executives discussing fetal tissue donation. The Center for Medical Progress, the organization behind the videos, says the footage proves the organization illegally sells body parts; Planned Parenthood insists everything it does is legal.

… “If this feels like a full-on assault on women’s health, that’s because it is,” Clinton said in the video. “When politicians talk about defunding Planned Parenthood, they’re talking about blocking millions of women, men and young people from live-saving preventive care.”…

“When they attack women’s health, they attack America’s health and it’s wrong and we’re not going to let them get away with it,” she said.

In other words? The Second Amendment isn’t a big deal. But the right to unlimited abortion — heck, the right to chop up babies for spare parts — this plays absolutely no role in an American culture that increasingly sends the message that human life — of any color or age or gender — simply doesn’t matter. To even suggest this violates the rigid norms of political correctness, as Democratic presidential candidate and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley revealed when he was criticized for saying “all lives matter” — and quickly apologized for his inadvertent walk on the wild side of politically incorrect left-wing zealotry.

Over in the New York Times, columnist Frank Bruni manages to write an entire column on guns this past Sunday and never once — once! — gets to the idea that the devaluing of human life by the Left is even relevant to the discussion. Bruni traveled to Austin, Texas and the University of Texas to discuss the state legislature’s passage of a campus carry law, specifically enabling students for concealed carry of a gun on campus. Bruni makes a point of quoting President Obama’s recent statement that Americans had become “numb” to gun violence.

Yet somehow — and one suspects that the thought of checking on this never even occurred to Bruni — there is the University of Texas with its Texas Policy Evaluation Project pumping out one report after another on the awfulness of restricting abortion. Perhaps UT and Mr. Bruni are “numb” to the idea that any of this attitude so pervades the culture at large that shooters like Chris Harper-Mercer just feel it’s no big deal to take human life — period. 

We have written before in this space — after the Santa Barbara shooting in 2014 — of a state (California) that has, per the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, an “A-” when it comes to tough gun laws… but per a mental health organization an “F” in getting help or commitment for those struggling with mental health issues. Bruni in fact mentions the 1966 University of Texas mass shooting by Charles Whitman — but doesn’t mention that the investigation that followed revealed that Whitman was at a minimum struggling with feelings of hostility and was medically determined afterwards to have had a tumor that may have affected his ability to control his emotions. Which is to say, all the way back almost fifty years ago the mental health issue was front and center and untouchable.

Everyone is for a discussion. But in fact, as Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and Mr. Bruni’s column illustrate vividly — and they are far from alone — the notion that the Left has injected a callous disregard for the value of life into the culture is simply not on the table. The very idea of admitting to any of this is to terrify every liberal politician out there. So… they blame the guns. Having assured the public that “Gun Free Zones” are the way to go — only to find the idea in practice is a dangerous fraud — they still defend the idea that arming school personnel is somehow a deeply dangerous idea. The fact of the matter is that if Chris Harper-Mercer had not killed himself, he would have been taken down by a cop — with a gun.

Once again America is stricken by a gun crime — and quite predictably the argument immediately takes on a Groundhog Day style to it.

We have all been here before. But there is one serious — make that major — difference between Left and Right in the gun control debate. In fact, for all its vaunted political power — which, it should be reminded, comes from grassroots American gun owners all across the country — the NRA can’t hold a candle to the power of the abortion lobby. 

So we will go on… and there will presumably be other mass shootings. And the denial of the most basic of human truths — that all lives do indeed matter from the unborn to the elderly — will continue to be ignored.

Sad. But true.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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