Article first appeared at Cheaper than Dirt.

Democrat Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton has recently suggested that if she were elected president, she would make drastic changes in how Americans own and use guns.  

At a New Hampshire Town Hall last week, Hillary Clinton said that a mandatory gun buyback program is something “worth looking at,” referring to Australia’s firearms confiscation programs in 1996 and 2003, which collected roughly 700,000 banned semiautomatic rifles and other firearms.

Clinton admitted she would consider implementing such a system in America during a campaign stop in Keene, N.H. There, a prospective voter asked her, “Recently, Australia managed to get away, or take away tens of thousands, millions, of handguns. In one year, they were all gone. Can we do that? If we can’t, why can’t we?”

Mrs. Clinton responded, “I think it would be worth considering doing it on the national level, if that could be arranged.”

In response, Chris Cox, executive director of The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said, “This validates what the NRA has said all along. The real goal of gun control supporters is gun confiscation. Hillary Clinton, echoing President Obama’s recent remarks on the same issue, made that very clear.”

At a private gathering from which an audio recording of Clinton speaking was leaked, she stated her belief that the Supreme Court wrongly held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to self-defense. In her own words from the recording: “…the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.”

Also, Ms. Clinton has said that as president, she would work to pass legislation making gun manufacturers financially liable for the misuse of their products.

She likewise suggested that as president, she would issue an executive order that would create a presidentially written and mandated definition of occasional sales and gifts so as to require background checks for all gun transfers— a requirement Congress continues to reject.

“I want to push hard to get more sensible restraints,” Clinton said on NBC’s Today show. During the interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on Today in Hollis, New Hampshire, the candidate rolled out plans for major new gun restrictions. “I want to work with Congress, but I will look at ways as president [to enact more gun regulations].”

Currently, people who occasionally sell their firearms (private sales) or give guns as gifts are exempt from conducting background checks. Clinton’s proposed EO would define occasional sales and gifts to require background checks for all gun transfers.

These ideas will likely help Ms. Clinton in the Democrat primaries. A Pew Poll late last year (Dec. 10, 2014) found that up to 81 percent of self-categorized “liberal Democrats” think it’s more important to control guns than to protect gun rights. The Shooter’s Log reported on that poll here.

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