Gov. Nikki Haley Wants To Arm All The Lady-Beaters, For The Constitution

Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina runs a hell of a state. It's the kind of state where Stand Your Ground laws don't apply to victims of domestic violence -- because that would be ridiculous! -- and it's still A-OK to let your Confederate freak flag fly because the out-of-state CEOs Haley talks to don't have a problem with it. Also, she ended racism by getting elected, YOU'RE WELCOME.

Since Haley has her re-election in November pretty much assured (good job, South Carolina, we're very proud of you), she's obviously feeling pretty confident she can say any old anything and keep her job. So at the gubernatorial debate on Tuesday, she wasn't at all afraid to say the darndest things. Haley was asked by the moderator, "Should the state make it easier for police to keep firearms out of the hands of convicted domestic violence offenders?"

You'd think this would be one of those softball questions, where there is only one obvious answer (which is "YES, OBVIOUSLY, DUH!" for those of you who aren't sure), and then Haley could give her stump spiel about how she is a woman and she likes women and she cares about women and her Grand Old Party also hearts women and blah blah blah yay women, hooray! But she took a different approach.

You know I've always believed in the Second Amendment, and I believe in it because I'm a certified weapons permit holder myself. And I know the classes, and I know the time, and I know the education that you need in order to be able to carry. We want to make sure that we put it in the hands of responsible people, which is why we passed legislation that said that anyone that had been ordered by the courts to be declared with a mentally ill disease, that they could not carry.

But for everybody else, we want them to have the ability to protect their home, protect their children, protect their business.

Let's just hit pause right there for a moment. If the court declares you mentally ill, then nope, you should not get to have a gun. But everyone else? Everyone else, including people the court has determined are violent criminals who beat up women? Those are the people she's talking about, right? The ones who should have the ability to protect their kids -- from themselves, apparently, since it's not all that uncommon for dudes who beat up their womenfolk to also beat up their kidfolk too. But as long as they are not crazy, whatcha gonna do? Second Amendment and all.

It's not like Haley doesn't give any shits whatsoever about domestic violence. She does!

Domestic violence is something that really does plague South Carolina, but it's something that we need to go deeper in. It’s a cultural issue, it's a generational issue, and we want to get into those communities.

The best chance we’re gonna have is going through our churches, making sure that victims of domestic silence understand there's a safe place for them. They're not comfortable going to law enforcement right now.

All righty, then. Domestic violence is far too much a cultural and generational issue -- because millennials don't beat each other up? Or because millennials beat each other up more? We're not sure -- so let's just leave government out of it completely and send those battered women off to Jesus. That should fix 'em right up.

So we've got to do better to make sure that they know that there are places that they can go. We need to continue toincrease penalties against domestic violence victimsand make sure that we're doing all we can to educate people on how they can have a better life.

We would like to believe that Haley's insistence that we should have stronger penalties forvictimsis one of those gaffe things. Not the disqualifying kind, of course, because those are for Democrats only. But still, a slip of the tongue that she didn't really mean. We'd like to think she meant that we should have harsher penalties forperpetratorsof domestic violence. That must be what she meant, right? RIGHT?

But then, she just finished telling us that those people deserve their Second Amendment rights, and the best way to deal with domestic violence is through the church, so now that we think about it ... maybe punishing victims instead of helping them isexactlywhat Haley meant.

[Via wonker "Christian"]