GUN POLITICS

It's August 20, 2016. At noon, while having a delicious hot beef sandwich at a friend's home, I was asked what I thought the final outcome would be regarding firearms if Hillary Clinton was elected President.

The effect won't be immediate. There isn't much of anything she would be able to do regarding the 2nd Amendment. Two-thirds of Congress is not about to vote to abolish or radically change the present wording, which was reviewed and approved not all that long ago by the Supreme Court. For now, the 2nd Amendment stands as is.

The problem will come in future years, as Mrs. Clinton gradually changes the mentality of the Supreme Court. Some of the present members will retire, and there will be repeated efforts to replace them with justices who have a more "liberal" or "progressive" viewpoint. As the court becomes weighted in that direction, the laws regarding firearms freedom in this country will change.

There will then be a gradual disarming of Americans. Our ability to become an overnight civilian force of about 80 million people will rapidly dwindle, but only if gun owners personally determine that the inevitable new laws actually pertain to them. But some of them may look at it this way: There are a lot of unsatisfactorily answered questions about whether Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have honored the laws of the land, starting with the Constitution of the United States. Example setters, they are. Perhaps the example they are setting with gun owners is that certain laws can be ignored. Personally, I don't know the answer to that. However, I do think that changes in the 2nd Amendment that reduce the freedom of gun owners will be met with considerable resistance.

If Donald Trump is elected, I expect so many things will improve on so many fronts that it will be hard to keep track of them all. He'll be the one to nominate Supreme Court Justices, and the United States will be blessed with new hope rather than bogged down with old lies.

JDC