The ONE Halfway Decent Candidate on Guns in This Race (And Their Skin Ain’t Orange)

One of the biggest deciding factors in voting this year has been the issue of the Supreme Court, and one of the reasons for that is the Second Amendment. But that’s not just a SCOTUS issue. Protecting our Second Amendment freedoms is going to be fight, and with executive actions and veto power on the table, the President’s view on the issue is paramount.

We already know that Hillary Clinton is the worst possible outcome on the issue of gun control. This is not a question, and it’s part of the rationale that conservatives who inexplicably defected to the dark side use to try and sell Trump.

But Trump is garbage on the issue too. We’ve been a thousand times down the road of his past indiscretions on the issue, which are in no way ameliorated by his (and his followers’) constant refrain that his sons use guns to hunt (could that be more irrelevant?), but those are not the only reason. Just this week he has shown what a malleable and wrong person he is on the issue.

And then there’s Gary Johnson.

“Gov. Johnson believes Second Amendment rights are too fundamental to be denied without due process, and being put on a list arbitrarily by the government is certainly not due process.”

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, whose campaign gave that statement to the Daily Caller this week after the Orlando Islamic terror attack, is not worthless on guns like our other two choices. He also pointed the Caller to the excellent post from the ACLU outlining why the terror watch list (which is a misnomer anyway) shouldn’t be used to restrict people’s freedoms until significant changes are made.

But it’s not just on the “No Fly, No Buy” nonsense that Johnson spoke this week. From Reason:

“I understand how so many people can believe that if you restrict this kind of weapon you can prevent this kind of incident,” said Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson in reaction to the murders in Orlando and the political calls to further restrict access to certain guns that arose after the shooting.

“But there’s just no evidence whatsoever to suggest that it makes us any safer, and in fact restricting guns makes things less safe, that’s the camp that I’m in,” he said in a phone interview this morning.

That is, of course, correct. And Johnson elaborates at length to Reason. Here’s another great excerpt.

He notes how many of these incidents, like the Colorado theater shooting, “happen in gun free zones, all these places where horrific shootings happen are all gun free.” Johnson praised a Libertarian Party press release calling for an end to gun-free zones. Johnson is fully aware of the cultural push against such thinking—”people hate to hear it, they just hate to hear it…antigun people they just feel, ooo, disgust when you start talking about, ‘well this was a gun free zone, so that means the bad guys’” have free rein—but Johnson does think more legal restrictions on guns are not only not helpful, but often harmful

He’s not perfect on these issues. But you can’t let the perfect put the good on a secret enemies list. When it comes to guns and the Second Amendment and respecting the constitution and the law and our civil liberties on these issues, there is only one candidate who is remotely trustworthy, solid, credible and knowledgeable. It’s not Hillary and it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Gary Johnson.

Of the Libertarian Party.

What a strange year.

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