These are the positions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton regarding crime and violence.
Donald Trump
Position: Protect our Second Amendment Rights and get violent criminals off the streets
Implementation Plans: Enforce the laws on the books. Empower law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves. Go after criminals and put the law back on the side of the law-abiding.
Bring back and expand programs like Project Exile, which moves gun crimes to the federal level where there is mandatory sentencing.
Fix our broken mental health system. Expand treatment programs, because most people with mental health problems aren’t violent, they just need help.
Defend the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Donald Trump believes law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice. The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own.
Fix the current National Background Check system for gun sales. Donald Trump wants to fix the system currently in place, and make it work as intended.
National right to carry: A concealed carry permit should be valid in all 50 states. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/second-amendment-rights
Other Statements:
In the presidential debates, he proposed use of “stop and frisk” policies, which the courts have determined to be unconstitutional searches.
“America’s police and law enforcement personnel are what separates civilization from total chaos, and the destruction of our country as we know it,” Trump said, calling for an end to “hostility against our police, and against all members of law enforcement,” Trump said in a speech in Virginia in July.
“We must maintain law and order at the highest level or we will cease to have a country,” Trump said in a Virginia Beach speech July 11.
“I feel that the gun-free zones — when you say that, that’s target practice for the sickos and the mentally ill. That’s [a] target. They look around for gun-free zones,” said Trump during CNBC’s Republican debate in October, 2015.
Hillary Clinton
Position: To successfully reform the criminal justice system and end the epidemic of gun violence
Implementation Plans: Strengthen bonds of trust between communities and police. Bring law enforcement and communities together to develop national guidelines on the use of force by police officers, making it clear when deadly force is warranted and when it isn’t and emphasizing proven methods for de-escalating situations. Also, provide federal matching funds to make body cameras available to every police department in America.
Double funding for the U.S. Department of Justice “Collaborative Reform” program. Across the country, there are police departments deploying creative and effective strategies that we can learn from and build on. Hillary will provide assistance and training to agencies that apply these best practices.
Reforming mandatory minimum sentencing.
Hillary will reform this system in these ways:
Cut mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses in half.
• Allow current nonviolent prisoners to seek fairer sentences.
• Eliminate the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine so that equal amounts of crack and powder cocaine carry equal sentences, and applying this change retroactively.
• Reform the “strike” system, so that nonviolent drug offenses no longer count as a “strike,” reducing the mandatory penalty for second- and third-strike offenses.
• Focus federal enforcement resources on violent crime, not simple marijuana possession. Hillary will allow states that have enacted marijuana laws to act as laboratories of democracy and reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule II substance.
• End the privatization of prisons. Hillary believes we should move away from contracting out this core responsibility of the federal government to private corporations.
• Expand background checks to more gun sales.
• Close the gun show and internet sales loopholes — and strengthen the background check system by getting rid of the so-called “Charleston Loophole.”
• Keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, other violent criminals, and the severely mentally ill. Doing so by supporting laws that stop domestic abusers from buying and owning guns, making it a federal crime for someone to intentionally buy a gun for a person prohibited from owning one.
• Closing the loopholes that allow people suffering from severe mental illness to purchase and own guns.
Read at: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/criminal-justice-reform/ , https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/gun-violence-prevention/
Other Statements:
“It’s a very difficult political issue. But we are smart enough, compassionate enough to balance legitimate Second Amendment rights concerns with preventive measures and control measures, so whatever motivated this murderer … we will not see more needless, senseless deaths,” Clinton said at an Iowa campaign event in 2015.
Compiled by the Jefferson Center, a non-partisan civic engagement organization in St. Paul, working with the Your Vote Ohio project.
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