PD Editorial: Donald Trump would protect guns before people

The deadly terror attack in Paris has not brought out the best in America or her politicians.

Perhaps predictably, one of the worst responses came from Donald Trump, who proposed increasing surveillance of American mosques and suggested that the government might need a database of all Muslims in America.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said during a lengthy interview with Yahoo News. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.” When asked if that included a database or special identification system for all Muslims in America, Trump wouldn’t rule anything out.

The Washington Post used that opportunity to ask Trump to clarify his position on another database: a national registry of guns. Unsurprisingly, Trump said he was against it.

“The Constitution of the United States is clear,” Trump said in a statement to the Post. “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Period. … Through the process of national gun registering, lawful gun owners will have their privacy invaded and will place information in the hands of government officials that could be easily abused.”

So the Second Amendment trumps safety and security concerns when it comes to registering guns but singling out certain Americans and refugees because of their religion for tracking and spying on houses of worship doesn’t raise any First Amendment issues? Does he believe a religious-based registry could never lend itself to any kind of abuse?

Trump has been on quite a roll recently. He pledged to bring back water boarding. He tweeted out an incendiary and inaccurate summary of black-on-black crime statistics he apparently found on a neo-Nazi website. He repeated a long discredited rumor about “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001.

The success of the Trump candidacy has baffled most political observers, who keep expecting his campaign to implode in the wake of repeated gaffes. But he just keeps going, holding steady as the Republican frontrunner.

His brand of ignorance and bigotry seems especially appealing to some voters in the wake of the attacks in Paris. Other presidential candidates have even chimed in with their own faith-based nonsense, such as Jeb Bush’s idea that the United States should only accept Christian refugees.

Trump’s candidacy should eventually collapse under the weight of his massive ego and unfettered mouth. If it does not, all Americans, but especially Republicans, will be due for some soul searching.

Trump might be right that America is “going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.” But one of those things will not be electing a demagogue president of the United States - something that is as unthinkable now as it has ever been.