washingtonpost.com – No stranger to exaggeration, well-coiffed billionaire Donald Trump told an audience at a National Rifle Association event that his likely general election opponent Hillary Clinton planned to “abolish the Second Amendment” to the Constitution. There’s no truth to that claim, as has been noted repeatedly — and as Clinton herself had noted in a tweet.

You’re wrong, @realDonaldTrump. We can uphold Second Amendment rights while preventing senseless gun violence. pic.twitter.com/G7g1AdZWCA

It seems obvious on the face of it that no candidate seeking federal elected office in the United States would be advised, in the current political environment, to advocate for repeal of the Second Amendment. Barack Obama has been the subject of rumors about his desire to ban weapons for about as long as he’s been subject to equally true rumors about his religion and his birthplace, but even after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, the strongest proposal Obama offered was to expand background checks. A plurality of Americans opposes new gun control measures, according to Quinnipiac University polling from September — much less approving of gutting the second item on the Bill of Rights.