If there’s one thing the Clintons have always done well, it’s projection. They are masters of accusing their political opponents of doing the very thing they themselves are doing. Decrying the “politics of personal destruction,” for example, was a favorite refrain of the Clintons in the ‘90s — all while they personally attacked and destroyed people.

Hillary Clinton made the latest entry in this wretched practice with her vitriol against gun owners and Second Amendment defenders.

In excerpts from a soon-to-be-released interview with her own former campaign spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton railed against Senator Ted Cruz and other Republicans who oppose restricting gun rights and banning guns.

“The opportunists on the other side, like Cruz and his ilk, they know better,” Clinton argued. “They are in the position of trying to keep people really riled up and scared that sensible gun legislation like we had in the '90s for 10 years will somehow undermine their rights.” She continued, “Well, what about the rights of all the rest of us? The rights of us to go to work, go shopping, go on dates to the movie theater, go to school, for heaven’s sakes. What about the rest of us?”

But she wasn’t done. “You know, democracy is the balancing of interests and rights,” she explained, “and unfortunately at this time, the gun worshipers have a huge advantage because of the filibuster and because of their shameless exploitation of people’s unwarranted fears.”

Where to begin?

We suppose, first of all, we should address the projection. It is Democrats who routinely stand on the caskets of innocents to push for “common sense” gun control — laws that ban, restrict, or even confiscate firearms and components from the law-abiding in the name of stopping criminals from … breaking the law. It is Democrats who exploit people’s unwarranted fears by inflating mass shooting numbers and “gun deaths” generally so that they can blame the tools (and by extension lawful owners of those tools) rather than the perpetrators. It is Democrats who express selective outrage over certain murders to “keep people riled up and scared” while ignoring the culturally depraved bloodbath in Democrat-controlled inner cities.

Clinton commits at least two other offenses that require rebuttal. The first is about our system of government and rights. Our nation is a republic, not a democracy. And our government’s job is not to “balance” interests and rights; it is to, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “secure these rights.” Moreover, securing the God-given right to self-defense does not deprive someone else of their “right” to go to a movie, as Clinton argues. Besides, if going to a movie is suddenly a right, what are all these Democrat governors doing closing movie theaters with pandemic restrictions? Never mind keeping kids out of schools.

Finally, Clinton has engaged in, well, the politics of personal destruction. The same woman who in 2016 dismissively rejected half the American population as a “basket of deplorables” now slanders the 100 million or so Americans who own firearms as “gun worshipers.” Substitute “abortion” for “guns” and see how Democrats like it. Barack Obama once derided us for “bitterly clinging to guns.” Other Democrats likewise mock and cajole responsible gun owners for some kind of dogmatic offense.

Perhaps instead of these mean-spirited personal attacks they might consider their constitutional oaths and the true meaning of rights. In the meantime, they should quit projecting their faults onto the rest of us.

We talk so much about the right to bear arms in America. @HillaryClinton wants to change the narrative.

What about the rights of everyone else? The right to go to work, to school, or to the grocery store without fear?

Clinton gets candid on #JSAH with @jmpalmieri this Thursday: pic.twitter.com/MFCJyj3KIC

— The Recount (@therecount) March 30, 2021