In response to questions from AARP Bulletin, Hillary Clinton made clear her position that to be successful, policies for ending terrorism must include gun control for all Americans.
AARP Bulletin asked, “What would you do to address terrorism?”
Well, these are legitimate fears. I believe that people are rightly concerned about violence. Terrorism is part of that violence, and we have to do the best job we can to keep America safe. So I’ve laid out a very comprehensive plan about taking on the terrorists, going after them where they operate, doing everything we can to take away their territories so they can’t mastermind attacks from afar. But we also have to go after them online because that is where they recruit, radicalize and direct attacks. And we need to do a better job of getting there early, rooting out people who are vulnerable and preventing that from happening.
She added:
But I’m looking at violence broadly. … It’s also why I’ve advocated gun-safety reform, like comprehensive background checks, closing the gun-show loophole, closing the online loophole—because, you know, it’s not only terrorists we need to be worried about. Terrorism is part of it, but gun violence kills 33,000 Americans a year. … We’ve got to get serious about stemming violence and terrorism in every way we can.
First, California has comprehensive background checks. Therefore, the state does not have a “gun-show loophole” or an “online loophole.” But they did have the December 12, 2015, firearm-based terror attack and the more recent high profile murder-suicide on the UCLA campus on June 1, 2016. The same may be said of Paris, France, which has background checks that are even more comprehensive than those in California. Paris has no “gun-show loophole” or “online loophole,” but they did have 12 people killed in a January 7, 2015, firearm-based terror attack and another 130 killed in the November 13, 2015, firearm-based terror attack.
Secondly, Clinton consistently makes the false claim that 33,000 Americans are killed by gun violence each year. She initiated this claim in a political ad that first ran in April. Breitbart News responded by showing 66 percent of the 33,000 deaths cited by Clinton were actually suicides.
For example, the overall number of firearm-related deaths in 2013 was approximately 32,888. Of these, the number of accidental deaths was 505, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the number of deaths due to actual “gun violence” was 11,208. Yet when Clinton repeats these numbers, she adds accidental deaths and homicides — which equal 11,713 — then adds the 21,175 firearm-related suicides, rounds the number off at “33,000,” and names “gun violence” as the cause for all these things.
This swells the number of gun violence victims in an attempt by Clinton to justify more gun control.
