I am not going to ascribe some nefarious motive behind what Donald J. Trump said about the Second Amendment and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I do not know what he meant when he said “Second Amendment people” might take care of Clinton if she’s elected president and appoints judges who might be unfriendly to gun owners’ rights.

The Republican presidential nominee has come under withering criticism for seemingly — according to some folks — suggesting someone should actually harm the Democratic presidential nominee.

The troubling aspect up front for me is the lack of clarity and precision that keeps pouring out of Trump’s pie hole when he makes statements such as his latest stumble-bum utterance.

He wants to be president of the United States, allegedly.

That means he must follow a number of rules associated with being head of state and government.

One of them has to be to speak with absolute clarity all the time.

I’m trying to imagine Trump letting slip some ridiculous assertion about a world leader or an international trouble spot that gets lost in the translation. These things do happen, you know.

What if, for example, he repeats his belief that Japan and South Korea should be able to develop nukes as a defense against North Korea? How is that tinhorn despot Kim Jong Un going to interpret it? Would he then, on a whim, decide to attack South Korea believing that his peninsula neighbors are about to explode a nuclear device?

The kind of loose and careless talk — which is what he exhibited with his Second Amendment remarks in North Carolina — cannot be tolerated in someone who presents himself as a serious candidate for the U.S. presidency.