The National Rifle Association’s chief lobbyist claimed — without offering any evidence — that the FBI was prevented from fully investigating Omar Mateen prior to his attack on an Orlando nightclub because of “the Obama administration’s political correctness.” Others, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, have made similar claims.

But FBI Director James Comey has said that the FBI over the course of two preliminary investigations in 2013 and 2014 recorded Mateen’s conversations, followed him, introduced him to confidential sources, interviewed him, “review[ed] transactional records from his communications, and search[ed] all government holdings for any possible connections.” Both investigations closed without the FBI taking any action against Mateen, because, Comey said, there was no reason at that time to suspect Mateen had terrorist ties or intentions.

“We’re also going to look hard at our own work to see whether there is something we should have done differently,” Comey said at a June 13 press briefing. “So far, the honest answer is: I don’t think so. I don’t see anything in reviewing our work that our agents should have done differently, but we’ll look at it in an open and honest way, and be transparent about it.”

In an op-ed for USA Today, Chris Cox — who heads the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action — explained why the NRA opposes new gun-control measures — particularly the reinstatement of a federal ban on certain military-style, semi-automatic firearms — in response to the nation’s worst mass shooting in modern history on June 12 in Orlando. Of course, Cox has a right to that opinion.

But in stating his case, Cox makes an unsubstantiated claim about the FBI’s prior contact with Mateen, a U.S.-born Muslim who pledged allegiance to the terrorist Islamic State on the night of the attack. 

Cox, June 15: The terrorist in Orlando had been investigated multiple times by the FBI. He had a government-approved security guard license with a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security. Yet his former co-workers reported violent and racist comments. Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s political correctness prevented anything from being done about it.

We asked NRA-ILA spokeswoman Amy Hunter what evidence Cox has that political correctness prevented the FBI from fully investigating Mateen. We have yet to receive a response, and we will update our article if we do.

But what we know so far does not support Cox’s claim, and in fact contradicts it.

At his June 13 press briefing, the FBI director said the agency became aware of Mateen in May 2013, when Mateen was working as a security guard at a local court house.

“He made some statements that were inflammatory and contradictory that concerned his co-workers about terrorism,” Comey said. “First, he claimed family connections to al Qaeda. He also said that he was a member of Hezbollah, which is a Shia terrorist organization that is a bitter enemy of the so-called Islamic State, ISIL. He said he hoped that law enforcement would raid his apartment and assault his wife and child so that he could martyr himself.”

Mateen’s odd behavior was reported to the FBI, and its Miami office opened a preliminary investigation. Under its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, the FBI must complete its preliminary investigation in six months, although it can get an extension of up to six additional months.

Comey said the first investigation in 2013 lasted 10 months, so it must have received an extension.

“Our investigation involved introducing confidential sources to him, recording conversations with him, following him, reviewing transactional records from his communications, and searching all government holdings for any possible connections, any possible derogatory information,” he said. “We then interviewed him twice. He admitted making the statements that his co-workers reported, but explained that he did it in anger because he thought his co-workers were discriminating against him and teasing him because he was Muslim. After 10 months of investigation, we closed the preliminary investigation.”

The fact that the preliminary investigation closed after 10 months indicates that the agency felt its investigation was completed. FBI rules discourage conducting preliminary investigations beyond a year, but a longer extension can be approved “by the appropriate FBIHQ operational section for ‘good cause.'”

Don Borelli, a retired FBI counterterrorism supervisor in New York, told the New York Times that the danger in keeping an investigation open without good cause is the impact that it can have on innocent people. “Imagine if you can’t get a job because you’re on some watchlist and there’s no basis for it,” Borelli told the Times.

Or imagine that someone cannot buy a gun because he or she is on a terrorist watch list and there’s no basis for it.

In fact, that is the very argument that the NRA chief lobbyist makes in response to gun-control advocates who want to give the attorney general the power to prevent people from buying guns if they are on the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist — which, as we have written, contains about 800,000 names, including foreigners and U.S. citizens. (Mateen, a U.S. citizen, was on the watch list while under FBI investigation.) In a press release issued June 15, Cox said that “due process protections should be put in place that allow law-abiding Americans who are wrongly put on a watchlist to be removed.”

Two months after it closed its preliminary investigation of Mateen, the FBI opened a second one after discovering that he knew a Florida man who carried out a suicide mission in Syria. That was in July 2014.

“Our Miami office was investigating the Florida man who had blown himself up for the Nusra Front in Syria. Again, the Nusra Front being a group in conflict with ISIL. We learned from the investigation that the killer knew him casually from attending the same mosque in that area of Florida,” Comey said. “Our investigation turned up no ties of any consequence between the two of them.”

Comey said the FBI again interviewed Mateen “to find out whether he had any significant contacts with the suicide bomber,” and determined that he did not, and that ended the second investigation. We asked the FBI how long that investigation lasted and whether any other investigative actions were taken, besides interviewing Mateen, but ​it declined to comment beyond Comey’s earlier remarks.

We understand that there are legitimate questions of the FBI. On CNN’s “At This Hour,” Sen. Lindsey Graham also questioned why the FBI closed its investigation. “What do you have to do to stay on the terrorist watch list? What are the criteria to close a file? To me, I want to know the answer to that question,” he said.

Fair enough. But Cox goes too far — and Huckabee even further — in blaming political correctness without any evidence.

In a June 14 blog post, Huckabee said that “political correctness kills, and it just set a new US record.”

There is simply no evidence to support such a claim.

Clarification, June 16: This article was updated to clarify that Chris Cox is executive director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, and Amy Hunter is its spokeswoman.

https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/4bbbceac-fcf9-4ae2-82fa-65e3391ae6ef

The post NRA’s Baseless FBI Claim appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The National Rifle Association implies Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley lied when he said he “never met Michael Bloomberg,” but there’s no evidence of that. The NRA ad puts two separate photos of the men side-by-side and says they were at the “same event.” It was a day-long event, and they spoke hours apart.

The NRA Political Victory Fund ad says Braley, a Democrat running for the state’s open Senate seat, is “so slick, he can’t stick to the truth,” as an image of an oily substance slides down the screen. But the ad shows it’s the NRA that’s slippery when it comes to the facts.

The ad says Braley “votes for Michael Bloomberg’s extreme anti-gun agenda” in Washington but tries to be “slick” and “hide his connections to Bloomberg” in Iowa. It shows a clip of Braley at an Oct. 11 debate saying, “I’ve never met Michael Bloomberg.”

The narrator continues, “But look at this: Braley and Bloomberg both at the same event,” as an image is shown of the two men, Bloomberg sitting on the left and Braley standing at a podium on the right. “Braley’s staff even said so,” the narrator continues, as an image of a Dec. 13, 2010, press release on the event appears on screen.

Case closed? Not at all.

The press release says that Braley spoke at a launch event that day for a group called No Labels at Columbia University in New York. No Labels aims to bring people together, regardless of political affiliation, and, in its words, “call[s] on our leaders to put the labels aside and focus on fixing America’s most pressing problems.” Its tagline: “Not left. Not right. Forward.” Its founders include former Democratic National Committee Finance Chair Nancy Jacobson and Republican strategist Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to President George W. Bush.

The Braley press release — which has made the rounds on Twitter as something of a smoking gun — says the congressman was “[j]oined by a bipartisan group of current and former elected officials, including Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), among others.”

But those officials didn’t appear on a panel with Braley, who addressed the audience on his own for about five minutes during a nearly three-hour morning session (see the 52:35 mark). Braley spoke about growing up in a “no labels community” and “no labels household,” in which his father was a Republican and his mother was a Democrat. He talked about bipartisanship, using two pieces of bipartisan legislation that he authored as examples of bringing people together.

There was a break for lunch, according to one of the final morning session speakers, followed by afternoon breakout sessions (see the 58:58 mark of part 2 of the morning video). Bloomberg, who was headlining the event, appeared on a panel on “Electoral Reform in America” during the afternoon. Bloomberg’s fellow panelists were then-Rep. Michael Castle of Delaware, then-Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, then-Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado of California and Ellen Freidin of FairDistrictsFlorida.org.

It was a large event, with the feel of a mini-political convention. In the introduction for the video stream of the day, TV journalist Bob Franken said there were more than 1,000 people in attendance in Columbia’s Lerner Hall auditorium. And the day was filled with big names and politicians, in addition to those mentioned in Braley’s press release, including New York Times columnist David Brooks, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, then-Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, and MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough.

It would be quite possible for two of the day’s speakers to never cross paths, given the number of attendees and speakers, and length of the event.

The Braley campaign told FactCheck.org that Braley and Bloomberg “did not meet at the event that day. It was an all day event, and Bruce was not there the entire time.” Sarah Benzing, Braley’s campaign manager and former chief of staff, tweeted on Oct. 11 that they did not see Bloomberg at the event: “I happened to staff Bruce at the no-labels event that day. No sign of Bloomberg.” And Matt Canter, who was on Gillibrand’s staff that day, also tweeted: “I was at that w Sen. Gillibrand & met Bruce that day. Didn’t see Bloomberg there while we were all there. All day event.”

No Labels confirmed to FactCheck.org that the two men attended the event, but didn’t know whether they talked or not.

We can’t say for sure whether Braley and Bloomberg met at the event or not. But neither can the NRA, which confirmed to us, and the New York Times, that the image of Braley and Bloomberg is actually two separate photos. Viewers with an inclination toward detective work could pick up on that, particularly if they pause the ad. But viewers may also think they’re looking at the same image, torn in half, as the graphics make it appear, and as the narrator implies.

The narrator’s words may lead viewers to believe that the NRA has photographic proof that the two men met, when he says, “But look at this: Braley and Bloomberg both at the same event.”

Braley has an “F” rating from the NRA, which takes issue with Braley’s pro-gun-control stances. Among his “votes” for Bloomberg’s “anti-gun agenda,” according to the NRA: a vote against the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011, which would have allowed residents of states that permit the carrying of concealed weapons to do so in other states.

In late 2012, in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting, Braley said he would sign on as a co-sponsor to legislation to ban high-capacity ammunition clips. He told the Huffington Post last year that he probably wouldn’t have supported the failed Senate legislation to expand background checks, because it didn’t go far enough. Braley objected to immunizing gun manufacturers from lawsuits for negligence. The Senate bill would have expanded background checks to private sales at gun shows, and also expanded lawsuit immunity to such sellers that completed checks.

So, Braley’s positions on guns are clearly at odds with the NRA, but the group goes too far in suggesting he lied when he said he never met Bloomberg.

— Lori Robertson, with Carolyn Fante

The post NRA’s ‘Slick’ Ad Links Braley to Bloomberg appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The National Rifle Association employs images in a series of TV ads of an intruder breaking into the home of a mother home alone with her baby to make the case that several Democratic candidates have “voted to take away your gun rights.” But the implication of the jarring imagery — that the legislators would prevent the woman from defending herself — goes far beyond the facts.

Music in the ad sets an ominous tone as a woman in a bathrobe checks a baby crib in a darkened house before getting a text message – presumably from the spouse – saying they have “Landed. Miami.” She texts back, “Love You. Good night.” Then, a shadowy figure passes by a window before violently breaking through the front door.

“It happens like that,” the female narrator says. “The police can’t get there in time. How you defend yourself is up to you. It’s your choice.”

With images of the home now bathed in flashing police lights and cordoned off by crime tape, the narrator in a version of the ad attacking Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu continues, “But Mary Landrieu voted to take away your gun rights. Vote like your safety depends on it. Defend your freedom. Defeat Mary Landrieu.”

Similar ads target Colorado Sen. Mark Udall and Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist.

The implication of the ad’s imagery is unmistakable: the targets of the ad have voted or supported policies that might prevent homeowners from being able to protect themselves against a violent intruder. But the NRA has to stretch the legislators’ records to the breaking point to make that connection.

First, and most importantly, none of the three politicians targeted in the ads is against people owning a gun or using it for self-defense in their homes. In its backup material, the NRA makes a more nuanced argument that the politicians have — in various ways — either voted for or expressed support for legislation that would limit the rights of law-abiding gun owners. It cites support for legislation that sought to expand background checks, or to limit assault weapons or large capacity magazines, or because they voted for the confirmation of Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan — both of whom the NRA views as hostile to gun rights.

The NRA’s Case Against Landrieu

Let’s start with the ad targeting Landrieu, as it has the weakest backing.

There are three legs to the NRA’s case that “Mary Landrieu voted to take away your gun rights” — and none of them hold any weight with regard to the implied claim that Landrieu would limit the ability of the woman in the ad to defend herself with a gun against an intruder.

The first is Landrieu’s vote for the Manchin-Toomey amendment for expanded background checks. The amendment, created by Sens. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, would have expanded background checks to private sales by unlicensed individuals at gun shows and over the Internet.

In a vote of 54 to 46, the Manchin-Toomey amendment failed to garner the 60 votes needed to move forward — despite Landrieu’s support.

So how exactly would that amendment have prevented a woman from having a gun in her home to protect herself from an intruder?

Our fact-checking colleague at the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, knocked down an unfounded hypothetical situation posed by the NRA — that the law would have prevented a woman threatened by a stalker,  who lives in a remote area far from gun stores, from making the quick purchase of a shotgun from a cousin’s neighbor. But even in that narrow situation, Kessler noted  the law would not have stood in the way of such a purchase.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam told us the vote on the Manchin-Toomey amendment “was considered a gun control vote” and that it would have “diminished 2nd Amendment rights.”

Besides, Arulanandam said, that vote was “in addition to other anti-gun votes she has cast.”

The NRA also pointed to Landrieu’s votes to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court — both of whom the NRA contends have been hostile to gun owners’ rights, based on positions they took in prior cases. We asked Arulanandam how those votes could have been a deal-breaker for the NRA given that Republican Sens.  Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina both voted for Sotomayor’s confirmation; and Graham voted for Kagan’s as well. In September, the NRA endorsed the re-election bids of both Alexander and Graham.

Arulanandam said people need to consider the totality of Landrieu’s record on gun control. But the only other votes cited by the NRA were ones Landrieu cast in 1999 and 2004 for amendments to close the so-called “gun show loophole” by requiring background checks on firearm transactions at gun shows. Expanded background checks “make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to obtain a firearm,” Arulanandam said.

“As the ad said, Mary Landrieu votes to take away your gun rights,” Arulanandam insisted.

But the ad does more than that. It shows frightening images of an intruder breaking into a mother’s home at night. We’re not going to wade into the debate about the inconvenience of background checks at gun shows, but it’s a long stretch from there to the implication that Landrieu would prevent the woman in the ad — and anyone else like her –from obtaining a gun for self-defense.

Landrieu’s campaign notes that Landrieu has co-sponsored and voted for legislation to allow people with permits to carry concealed weapons in states other than their own; has repeatedly opposed a ban on assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips; and that she voted to prevent the seizure of firearms during a state of emergency. And perhaps most germane to the NRA ad, Landrieu praised a decision by the Supreme Court to repeal a ban on carrying handguns in Washington D.C.; and voted in 2009 to “restore Second Amendment rights in the District of Columbia” and to repeal its ban on semi-automatic weapons. In other words, Landrieu has been an advocate for people like those featured in the NRA ad being able to keep a firearm in their home for protection.

Udall, Crist & Gun Rights

In its backup material for the claim that Udall “voted to take away your gun rights,” the NRA again cites votes for the Manchin-Toomey amendment and votes to confirm Sotomayor and Kagan to the Supreme Court.

The Udall campaign noted that in Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing, the Colorado senator specifically asked her views on the 2nd Amendment’s right to bear arms. According to an Associated Press account at the time, Sotomayor “told Udall she would follow a 2008 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed Americans’ right to own guns for self-defense.”

But in addition to those votes, the NRA cites Udall’s vote in 2013 to regulate large capacity ammunition feeding devices. The proposed amendment failed 46-54.

The NRA’s Arulanandam says law-abiding people ought to be able to possess the “firearms they feel comfortable with,” including those with large-capacity ammunition feeding devices.

“People have to be prepared for the worst and plan for the worst,” Arulanandam said. “What if there is more than one attacker? … Our position is that law-abiding people should be able to have the upper hand in situations like these.”

On the same day as the Manchin-Toomey vote and the vote to regulate large capacity ammunition feeding devices, Udall also voted against an assault weapons ban; and in favor of cross-state reciprocity for the carrying of concealed firearms.

The Udall campaign issued a statement to us, via e-mail, stating that “the implication that he [Udall] would prevent a responsible gun owner from purchasing a gun to protect herself is completely preposterous.”

The NRA backup for the ad about Crist, the Florida gubernatorial candidate, refers to an article in the Tampa Bay Times in 2012. In that article, Crist — who was reliably pro-gun rights when he served as a Republican Florida governor — said that in light of the “wake-up call” from the Newtown shooting, he now supported an assault weapons ban, a size limit on ammunition clips and tougher background checks.

“We need to have some restrictions, that’s pretty obvious to most people,” Crist told the Tampa Bay Times. “What do you need a 30-clip magazine for? Not to go hunting deer. I can tell you that because I hunt deer.”

There is enough in the article to make a case that Crist supports legislation that would infringe on your gun rights, but does this mean he is “opposed” to your gun rights? Even the Supreme Court has said that Congress has the right to impose reasonable restrictions on gun rights.  The argument then becomes what is a reasonable restriction.

But as with all three ads, the comment about Crist needs to be considered in the totality of the ad’s imagery.

It’s one thing for the NRA to make the argument, in the case of Udall, that he would limit this woman’s ability to  use large ammunition clips; or in the case of Crist, that she might not be able to use an assault weapon; or in the case of  Landrieu, that the woman might have to pass a background check if she had sought to buy a firearm at a gun show. But the imagery of the ad goes well beyond any of those more narrow issues.

To be clear, none of the three — Landrieu, Udall or Crist — opposes the right of law-abiding Americans to own a handgun, or to use that gun to defend themselves against a home intruder.

We should note that there is also a version of the NRA ad, using the same imagery, supporting NRA-endorsed Republicans — including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Senate candidate Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Those ads say the Republicans have “protected your right to self-defense.” (You can view all of the ads here). To that, we would add that the record shows their Democratic opponents, Alison Lundergan Grimes and Sen. Mark Pryor, respectively, have also supported Americans’ right to own a gun and to use it in self-defense against an intruder in their home.

— Robert Farley

The post NRA’s Ominous But Misleading Appeal appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Did “Obama and the EPA” shut down the nation’s last lead smelting plant as part of a “back door gun control” plan to reduce the supply of ammunition?

A: No. The plant closing on Dec. 31 is in response to EPA rules adopted before President Obama took office, and ammunition manufacturers say it will not affect supply.

FULL QUESTION

Is the shutting down of the last lead smelting operation in the US a back door plot by the EPA and Obama administration to impact gun control and second amendment rights by limiting ammunition imports of foreign nations as the only source of lead ammunition now that smelting operations have ceased in the US?

Here is a copy of the email that I received that prompted me to ask FactCheck.org for an answer to my question concerning the EPA and the Clean Air Act to cause the smelting factories to close down and end production of lead for ammunition.

Back Door Gun Control Moves Forward

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Cross-Posted at Right Wing News

There are numerous alarming reasons why the US government and the military have been buying up all the ammo. Here’s one of them. Obama and the EPA just shut down the last lead smelting plant in the US. They raised the EPA regulations by 10 fold and it would have cost the plant $100 million to comply. You can own all the guns you want, but if you can’t get ammo, you are out of luck.

Remember when Obama promised his minions that he was working on gun control behind the scenes? Welcome to it. Now, all domestic mined lead ore will have to be shipped overseas, refined and then shipped back to the US. Not only will ammo now be even harder to come by, the demand and the process of supply will cause the price to skyrocket even more. And ponder this… there is an excellent chance that Obama will rig the market to where all ammo has to be purchased from a government entity instituting de facto ammo registration. So much for the Second Amendment. There has not been a peep about this in the major news outlets and it is done. With the US no longer producing lead, all supplies will now have to come from China, Australia or Peru, with the overwhelming emphasis on China. More redistribution of wealth; more economic and liberty crippling of the US on tap.

The asshats at the EPA (evil protection agency) had this to say:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the company “made a business decision” to shut down the smelter instead of installing pollution control technologies needed to reduce sulfur dioxide and lead emissions as required by the Clean Air Act.

The Doe Run Co. announced last year that it had dropped plans to build a new lead processing facility in Herculaneum that would have used a new, cleaner lead production technology. The company cited the $100 million project as too financially risky.

The EPA is playing Mafioso I guess — we didn’t make them shut down, they made a business decision. In other words, they couldn’t pay the extortion, so the thugs shut them down. I’m pretty sure that Americans are getting ready to make their own business decision regarding the Marxists and I don’t think it will be pleasant. But Marxists will do or die and are doubling down on the destruction of energy in America, our way of life and the Constitution. The smelting plant has known since 2010 this was coming. They couldn’t stop it and no one else rose up to stop it either. The business had been in production for 120 years and now goes the way of our auto industry.

The military’s obsession with ammo was related to security and supply. They knew this was coming too, so they bought up all they could get before the plug was pulled. Screw the average American. It’s as Chris Muir said, he’s not as worried about where the bullets will come from, as much as how the government will deliver them and I’m right there with him on that one.

So, back door gun control is moving forward and while we are all distracted with shiny stuff, our Second Amendment rights are just about gone. Obama is one Marxist dictator who is savvy at political chess. He has flanked the Second Amendment. Now it’s our move.

FULL ANSWER

Let’s start with the one thing this viral email gets right: The Doe Run Company will close its primary lead smelter plant in Herculaneum, Mo., on Dec. 31 in response to what it called “increasingly stringent environmental regulations imposed on primary lead smelters.”

But the email is wrong to claim “Obama and the EPA” is responsible for forcing the plant to close after “they raised the EPA regulations by 10 fold.” The Environmental Protection Agency reduced the ambient air quality standard for lead from 1.5 micrograms of lead per cubic meter of air to 0.15 in October 2008 during the Bush administration — not under Obama.

The email is also wrong when it says the Herculaneum plant is the “last lead smelting plant in the US.” The company says the Herculaneum plant is its last primary smelter in the United States. Doe Run and other companies operate secondary lead smelting plants. Primary plants use mined resources, while secondary plants use recycled materials, such as lead batteries.

The National Rifle Association says recycled lead “is the type most often used by ammunition manufacturers,” and the plant closing “should not have the dramatic impact that some have predicted.”

Missouri Coalition for the Environment v. the EPA

The impending closure of the Herculaneum plant has its origins in a 2004 lawsuit filed against the EPA by the Missouri Coalition for the Environment in the home state of the Doe Run Company. The environmental group argued that the EPA had failed its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to review and revise, if necessary, the air quality standards for lead every five years. In 2005, a U.S. District Court in Missouri agreed and ordered the EPA to conduct such a review, giving the agency until September 2008 to comply.

The EPA adopted tough new standards in October 2008. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported at the time that the new rules were “10 times more stringent than the old standard for lead, a toxic metal known to impair neurological development in children.”

Post-Dispatch, Oct. 7, 2008: Some national environmental groups had worried the agency would select a much weaker standard, pointing to last-minute lobbying of the White House by a lead industry group. Instead, the agency selected a standard that was in the low end of a range of numbers included in an EPA proposal last spring.

The paper quoted Dan Vornberg, vice president of environmental affairs for Doe Run, as saying: “The new standard will be dramatically lower and will have a significant impact on our operations.”

It wasn’t until 2010 that the company announced that it would close the Herculaneum plant. The announcement came as part of what Doe Run called a “landmark environmental agreement” with the EPA that also included a $3.5 million penalty that the company agreed to pay to federal, state and local government agencies and $7.5 million toward environmental projects.

The agreement was the culmination of a decades-long battle with the EPA and local residents, as the Associated Press reported shortly after the company announced the plant’s closing.

Associated Press, Dec. 11, 2010: Over the past three decades, the EPA has cited Doe Run for air emissions, lead dust in homes, and elevated levels of the metal in yards and children’s blood. The standards got even tougher two years ago, the result of a lawsuit by a Missouri environmental coalition on behalf of two former Herculaneum residents. The federal government changed its standards for the permissible amount of lead in the air for the first time in three decades, making them 10 times stricter.

The company also ran afoul of state regulators. In announcing the plant closing, Doe Run also noted that the Herculaneum smelter was scheduled to close anyway, because of state regulations. “The company will also discontinue operating its Herculaneum smelter by the end of 2013, rather than in 2016 as required by state regulation for sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions,” the Doe Run announcement said.

Enter the Conspiracy Theories

As the date of the plant closing neared, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote a story on Oct. 16 about the impact of the plant closing on workers  — triggering a series of conservative blog posts spinning conspiracy theories about why the plant was closing and the impact it would have on gun owners.

The viral email above included a blog post written by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton that appeared Oct. 29 on NoisyRoom.net and Right Wing News under the headline, “Back Door Gun Control Moves Forward.” A week or so later, the New American posted an item that carried the headline, “EPA Closure of Last Lead Smelting Plant to Impact Ammunition Production.” It claimed that “recent actions taken against the country’s last lead smelting facility will affect the right to keep and bear arms.”

The New American website even “connected this dot” (the plant closing) to other Second Amendment conspiracy theories (including one we already debunked about unfounded fears of a U.N. gun ban treaty) to expose an “overall plan to leave Americans without weapons and ammunition.”

Nonsense.

The NRA’s lobbying arm — the Institute for Legislative Action — initially fueled the concerns about the impact of the plant closing on the supply and price of ammunition. In an Oct. 25 blog item, the NRA-ILA didn’t blame Obama. It correctly noted that the EPA tightened the air quality standards in 2008. But the NRA-ILA said: “Whatever the EPA’s motivation when creating the new lead air quality standard, increasingly restrictive regulation of lead is likely to affect the production and cost of traditional ammunition.”

But then there was push back from ammunition suppliers and the NRA-ILA walked back its earlier statement. The NRA-ILA posted a second item on Dec. 5 that carried the headline, “U.S. Ammunition Industry to Survive Closure of Lead Smelter.”

The NRA-ILA said the lead used to make ammunition “makes up only about three percent of lead consumption in the United States,” and most of that comes from recycled lead. “This recycled lead, which will still be able to be smelted in the United States at secondary smelters even after the Herculaneum smelter closes, is the type most often used by ammunition manufacturers,” the NRA-ILA said.

The NRA-ILA update also linked to two ammunition manufacturers who say the plant closing won’t have any impact on their operations or on the nation’s ammunition supply.

Ammunition Manufacturers Respond

One of the companies that the NRA-ILA cites in its blog post is Sierra, an ammunition company based in Doe Run’s home state of Missouri. Sierra said in a Nov. 1 blog post that it uses only recycled lead, so the plant closing will not affect its supply of lead or its manufacturing of ammunition.

“Sierra uses no primary lead at all and never has, so we use nothing directly from this facility,” Sierra said, referring to the plant that is closing. “The lead we buy from Doe Run comes from their recycling facility in Boss, MO that is about 90 miles away from the smelter that is closing.”

The company said it sees “no reason for alarm.”

The NRA-ILA also linked to Federal Premium Ammunition’s FAQ page, which includes a question about the plant closing and the impact on its ammunition manufacturing. “At this time we do not anticipate any additional strain on our ability to obtain lead,” it said.

Federal also addressed other questions about the Department of Homeland Security causing an ammunition shortage by buying up bullets and “taking away ammunition from civilians” — another conspiracy theory that we have debunked. The company’s FAQ page says, “The current increase in demand is attributed to the civilian market” — not the government. Update, Feb. 14, 2014: In fact, the Government Accountability Office said in a January 2014 report that Homeland Security’s annual ammunition purchases have declined every year since fiscal year 2009, dropping from 132.9 million rounds in 2009 to 84.4 million in 2013.

Federal’s parent company, ATK Sporting Group, elaborated in an April 11, 2013 letter to its customers. It acknowledged that there has been “an industry-wide shortage [of ammunition] at most retail outlets,” but it cited an “unprecedented demand for commercial ammunition.” The company letter said there is “much speculation and misinformation” about the shortage that is “false and baseless.”

ATK Sporting Group, April 11: In one example, there are a vocal few who believe that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is buying excessive quantities of ammunition thereby restricting availability to the commercial market. Simply stated, this is a false and baseless claim. In fact, we do supply the DHS with a small percentage of ammunition in select calibers consistent with our contractual requirements. However, the commercial market receives the vast majority of ammunition produced to serve the needs of civilian hunters and shooting sports enthusiasts.

The Federal Premium FAQ page says its “production volumes on government contracts have been stable since the mid-2000s.”

So to recap:

• The last primary smelter in the United States is indeed closing on Dec. 31, but because of EPA regulations passed under Bush — not during the Obama administration.
• Ammunition manufacturers most often use recycled lead from secondary smelters, so the closing of the nation’s last primary smelter will not have much of an effect on ammunition supply.
• There is an ammunition shortage, but it is being caused by an unprecedented demand in the civilian market — not by government purchases.

— Eugene Kiely

Sources

Press release. “Herculaneum Smelter Update.” The Doe Run Company. 7 Nov 2013.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Lead Air Quality Standards.” Undated, accessed 18 Dec 2013.

National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action. “U.S. Ammunition Industry to Survive Closure of Lead Smelter.” 5 Dec 2013.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Fact Sheet: First Draft Staff Paper for Lead.” Undated, accessed 18 Dec. 2013.

Missouri Coalition for the Environment, et al v. the United States Environmental Protection Agency. No. 4:04CV00660 ERW. U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri. 14 Sep 2005.

Press release. “The Doe Run Company Reaches Landmark Environmental Agreement.” The Doe Run Company. 8 Oct 2010.

Suhr, Jim. “Lead smelter’s pending exodus tugs at Mo. town.” Associated Press. 11 Dec 2010.

Thorsen, Leah. “Doe Run workers to be cut at end of December.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 16 Oct 2013.

Monroe-Hamilton, Terresa. “Back Door Gun Control Moves Forward.” NoisyRoom.net. 29 Oct 2013.

Wolverton, Joe II. “EPA Closure of Last Lead Smelting Plant to Impact Ammunition Production.” 6 Nov 2013.

Gore, D’Angelo. “Still No International Gun Ban Treaty.” FactCheck.org. 27 Jun 2012.

National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action. “End of an Era: Last U.S. Lead Smelter to Close in December.” 25 Oct 2013.

Press release. “Sierra Responds: How Will the Closure of the Lead Smelting Plant Affect Sierra Bullets?” Sierra. 1 Nov 2013.

Frequently Asked Questions. Federal Premium Ammunition. Undated, accessed 18 Dec 2013.

Finley, Ben. “Did FEMA Create a Youth Army?” FactCheck.org. 30 Nov 2013.

ATK Sporting Group. ATK Sporting Group letter to customers. 11 Apr 2013.

The post No ‘Back Door’ Gun Control appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

It’s that time of year again when we look back — perhaps not so fondly — on the most noteworthy nonsense from the past 12 months. The year after a presidential election was certainly no letdown from a fact-checking perspective. In 2013, we uncovered falsehoods to fairy tales about immigration, gun control, the IRS, Benghazi and — no surprise here — the Affordable Care Act.

• President Obama’s now legendary claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” is actually an old whopper for us. But it smashed into reality this year as insurers canceled individual market plans.
• Republicans claimed Congress was “exempt” from the health care law, when in fact lawmakers face an additional requirement that other Americans don’t. A so-called “special subsidy” is nothing more than the standard employer contribution to premiums that the government has long made for its employees.
• White House Press Secretary Jay Carney falsely said the State Department had changed only one word of CIA talking points on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
• Sen. David Vitter, among others, claimed the Senate immigration bill would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, citing a Heritage Foundation report. But the report wasn’t on the bill itself, and it gave a 50-year cost estimate.
• The IRS’ Lois Lerner misled reporters about when she first learned of employees singling out conservative groups for scrutiny.
• Both Republicans and Democrats made false claims about premium rates under the Affordable Care Act, while Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rep. Louie Gohmert gave bogus statements about how the law would “literally kill” Americans or punish those earning $14,000 a year.
• The National Rifle Association wrongly claimed that “80% of police say background checks will have no effect” on violent crime, and Democrats used an old, thin survey to claim 40 percent of guns were acquired without a background check.

And that’s not all. There were more falsehoods on guns, the health care law, the Sept. 11 hijackers, worker productivity and President Obama’s court nominees. What follows is our compilation of the whoppers of the year, in no particular order.

Analysis

For more on each claim, follow the links to our original articles.

‘If You Like Your Plan …’ Well, Not So Much

President Obama’s claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” made a big splash this year. But a debunking of the president’s years-old promise was old news to us. In fact, the claim is now a three-time whopper designee: It made our list of presidential campaign whoppers in 2012 and a 2010 list of health care whoppers. We said as far back as August 2009 that the president simply couldn’t make this promise to everyone.

Those stories were based on expert analysis of the impact of the law, and some common sense. The Congressional Budget Office has been estimating since 2009 that at least a few million workers wouldn’t receive an offer of coverage through their employer due to the law, and clearly, Obama couldn’t guarantee that employers wouldn’t switch the plans they offered, whether the Affordable Care Act existed or not. Also, as we wrote in 2012 those who buy private coverage on their own “may have to get a new plan if theirs doesn’t cover minimum benefit standards, which are yet to be determined. Plus, the insurance carriers offering these policies can change the plans without the policyholders’ blessing.”

In 2013, reality proved Obama’s whopper wrong, as insurers canceled millions of individual market plans that didn’t cover all the benefits the law required of those plans, and some employers did exactly what the CBO expected. The grocer Trader Joe’s, for instance, sent its part-time employees to the exchanges, along with $500 each to help them get new insurance there.

In this business, it seems false claims never die, but perhaps this one finally has. Obama said he was “sorry” for the whole affair in an interview with NBC News.

Reality Confronts Obama’s False Promise, Oct. 29

Congress Not ‘Exempt,’ No ‘Special Subsidy’

Speaking of immortal falsehoods, several Republicans, and a steady dose of viral emails, have claimed that members of Congress are “exempt” from the health care law. But no matter how this one is spun — and we’ve seen several variations — it’s not true. Lawmakers are required to have insurance, or pay a penalty, just like the vast majority of Americans. This “exempt” claim actually pertains to a special requirement for Congress and members’ staffs: They have to get their insurance through the exchanges, and they’re forbidden from continuing to get coverage through their employer, the federal government. That’s thanks to a Republican amendment added to the Affordable Care Act.

When the Office of Personnel Management ruled that Congress and staffers could continue to receive an employer contribution to their exchange plan premiums, some, including North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, claimed Congress was getting a “special subsidy.” Huckabee said it was a “little break” for Congress that “really exempted them from some of the pain of Obamacare.” But it’s nothing more than the same level of premium contribution the government has long paid for employees’ insurance, a contribution it also will continue to make for other federal workers.

Congress and an Exemption from ‘Obamacare’?  May 3

No ‘Special Subsidy’ for Congress, Aug. 30

Benghazi Blunder

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeatedly, and wrongly, said that the White House and State Department had changed just one word of CIA-authored talking points on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi. The talking points, used by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice on political talk shows, said the attack, which killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, started “spontaneously” as a protest. But that turned out to be false. The attack was premeditated and carried out by terrorists.

Carney said the White House and State Department only changed the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility.” But news reports from the Weekly Standard and ABC News, which published 12 drafts of the talking points, show that State Department comments prompted the CIA to make many alterations, including deleting references to CIA warnings of al Qaeda-linked threats and the possibility of the al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia being involved. We’d note that Republicans asserted the changes amounted to an election-year cover-up, but there’s no evidence of that. One thing that was not changed was the false claim that the attack was the result of a spontaneous protest. That was contained in the original draft, and survived into the final version.

Benghazi Attack, Revisited, May 14

Health Care Hyperbole

We’ve seen some far-fetched claims about the Affordable Care Act over the years, and 2013 was no exception.

In a March floor speech, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann urged Congress to repeal Obamacare “before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens.” That’s an interesting claim, considering millions are expected to gain coverage under the law — 25 million of the uninsured would gain insurance by 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Some studies have shown that not having insurance leads to a higher risk of dying prematurely.

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert pushed the bogus bit that a “poor guy out there making $14,000″ is “going to pay extra income tax if he cannot afford to pay the several thousand dollars for an Obamacare policy.” That “poor guy” would be eligible for Medicaid or, in a state that isn’t expanding Medicaid, like Texas, he would be eligible for heavily subsidized private insurance. And he can’t be taxed or fined if he can’t afford that private coverage or chooses not to buy it.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was wrong when he claimed “you will go to jail” if you don’t buy health insurance and refuse to pay the tax penalty. The law says that persons who do not pay the penalty “shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution.” In 2010, the IRS commissioner confirmed violators wouldn’t face jail time. The IRS could dock future tax refunds to collect the penalty.

Our sister site, FlackCheck.org, compiled a video on these whoppers and others on the Affordable Care Act.

Bachmann’s Killer Health Care Claims, March 22

Louie Gohmert’s Health Care Hooey, Aug. 14

Cruz-a-thon, Part II, Sept. 27

 A Whopper from the IRS

A political firestorm erupted this year over IRS employees’ extra scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Lois Lerner, director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division, wrongly told reporters on May 10 that she first learned of employees targeting these groups in 2012 from media reports on conservative organizations that complained about delays. But a Treasury inspector general’s report released four days later showed she knew about the flagging of conservative groups nearly a year earlier, and that she tried to correct it.

Lerner, the IG report said, was briefed in late June 2011 about employees singling out groups applying for 501(c)(4) status with “tea party” or “patriot” descriptors. The status is for “social welfare” organizations that can be involved in politics as long as it is not their “primary activity.” Lerner raised concerns and “instructed that the criteria be immediately revised,” the report said. She also learned in early 2012 that the IRS had sent the groups letters asking “unnecessary” questions — as determined by her office — such as the identity of donors. But when questioned by reporters just days before that report was released, Lerner said that “we started seeing information in the press that raised questions for us and we went back and took a look.” Lerner retired from the IRS in September.

IRS Officials Misled Congress, Public, May 21

Slanted Price Tag on Immigration

After a bipartisan group of senators — the so-called Gang of Eight — released immigration legislation that included a path to citizenship, the conservative Heritage Foundation, an opponent of the bill, countered with a report claiming the cost of such an overhaul would total $6.3 trillion. Republican Sens. David Vitter and Jeff Sessions used the study as ammunition to criticize the bill, with Vitter claiming that “[a] $6.3 trillion price tag should completely disqualify the Gang of 8 proposal.” But the study wasn’t on this particular legislation — it was begun months before the bill was released — and the cost figure is over 50 years, a length of time that makes such projections highly speculative. Not to mention not as large as the figure seems: $6.3 trillion over half a century would be about 1 percent of government spending.

The $6.3 trillion figure also relied on a less optimistic estimate of offsetting economic benefits than the Congressional Budget Office did. The nonpartisan CBO later estimated that the Senate bill, which would provide a 13-year path to citizenship for immigrants in the U.S. illegally and increase border security funding, would reduce the deficit by $158 billion over 10 years, and by another $685 billion in the decade after that. Heritage’s eye-popping $6.3 trillion figure also does not take into account the net cost — compared with the cost of doing nothing. The author of the report acknowledged the net cost would be $5.3 trillion, but he said “a loophole in existing law” could make the net cost “trillions” less than that. The bill passed the Senate in late June; the House could take action on immigration legislation in 2014.

The Immigration Bill’s ‘$6.3 Trillion Price Tag,’ June 4

9/11 Hijackers and Student Visas

Only one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers was in the U.S. on a student visa, despite claims to the contrary made by several lawmakers. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, who helped draft the Senate immigration bill, and Chuck Grassley, who opposed it, both claimed at a Senate committee hearing that the hijackers were on student visas. Graham said “the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were all students here on visas” that had expired. Then Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano even agreed with that assessment.

But they’re all wrong. Eighteen of the 19 hijackers entered the U.S. on tourist or business visas, according to the 9/11 Commission Report.

9/11 Hijackers and Student Visa, May 10

Both Sides Spin Gun Stats

The early months of 2013 were dominated by a debate on gun control, as politicians and advocates reacted to the December 2012 mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. Both sides of the debate used false and misleading statistics in an attempt to bolster their cases.

In online ads opposing Senate legislation to expand background checks, the National Rifle Association fabricated a statistic: that “80% of police say background checks will have no effect” on violent crime. The cited survey in question didn’t say that. At all. The self-selected online poll didn’t contain a single question asking whether “background checks” would impact “violent crime.”

Democrats, meanwhile, adopted a favorite talking point based on thin evidence: As President Obama said in a Jan. 16 speech, “as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check.” That’s based on a nearly 20-year-old survey of fewer than 300 people who were asked whether they thought guns they had acquired came from federally licensed dealers.

Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged the questionable nature of that statistic when he once used it, cautioning that “we can’t say with absolute certainty what I’m about to say is correct.” Biden wasn’t nearly as careful when he claimed that “there were fewer police being murdered … when the assault weapons ban, in fact, was in existence.” FBI statistics on the killings of law enforcement officers don’t support that. In fact, there’s no discernible pattern before, during or after the assault weapons ban was in effect, from 1994 to 2004.

New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel added his own false claim to the debate over a new ban on assault weapons. Rangel claimed there are “millions of kids dying, being shot down by assault weapons.” Thankfully, that’s not even close. Over a 30-year period, there were about 65,000 homicides with any firearm — not just “assault weapons” — among those 19 years old or younger. That’s according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control database, which shows there were nearly 1 million violence-related firearm deaths (not only homicides) in the U.S. for all ages from 1981 to 2010.

NRA Misrepresents Police Survey, Legislation, April 18

Guns Acquired Without Background Checks, March 21

Biden Wrong on Police Deaths, Jan. 30

Rangel’s Assault Weapons Whopper, March 22

And Both Sides Spin Insurance Premiums

The Affordable Care Act’s impact on insurance premiums has been a hot topic, with Republicans and Democrats cherry-picking statistics and anecdotes, and giving false comparisons on rates going up or down. President Obama falsely said in August that all of the currently uninsured would be able to get coverage on the exchanges “at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market” even without federal tax credits. Not true. Experts have long predicted that some will pay more and some will pay less. Even Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said so.

Obama also said that the average premiums for the Illinois exchange were 25 percent lower than individual market rates. Not so. Illinois officials said rates were 25 percent lower than federal officials had predicted, not 25 percent lower than current rates.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, greatly exaggerated when he said the Ohio Department of Insurance had announced that individual market premiums would increase by 88 percent because of the law. Instead, the department said estimated rates would be 41 percent higher on average in 2014, compared with 2013. That was in a press release that called for the law’s repeal.

As we’ve said many times, those buying their own insurance could see their premiums go up or down — or largely stay the same — due to any number of individual factors, including age, health status, where they live and whether they smoke. And what kind of insurance they had before. Exhibit A: The drastically different experiences of House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Joaquin Castro in choosing plans on the exchange. Boehner, age 64, said his premiums will double. But Castro, age 39, said he will pay about half of what he is paying now.

Obama Overpromises on Premiums, Aug. 13

Spinning Premium Rates, Sept. 27

Not-So-Judicial Facts

Obama claimed that “my judicial nominees have waited three times longer to receive confirmation votes than those of my Republican predecessor.” Wrong. In Obama’s first term, he made out better than President George W. Bush with nominees to federal appeals courts. Obama’s were confirmed more quickly on average than Bush’s first-term nominees. Obama’s federal trial courts nominees took an average of 42 percent longer than Bush’s to confirm, but not “three times” longer. Obama didn’t say this, but he was talking about the time nominees waited for a vote after first being approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee — not the total wait time.

Obama’s Judicial Juggling, June 5

We’re Not That Productive

In a commencement address, Vice President Biden falsely boasted that U.S. workers “are three times as productive as any worker in the world.” We may work hard, but not that much harder than the rest of the globe. By the standard measure of productivity — gross domestic product per hour worked — Americans came in third, trailing Norway and Ireland, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even using a different measure — GDP per employed person — the U.S. came in second, still behind the hard-working people of Norway.

Joe Biden’s Productivity Piffle, May 15

A note to our readers: This isn’t an exhaustive list, and we likely missed some of your personal favorites. As we get ready to turn the page on 2013, we invite you to share your thoughts on the most egregious whoppers of the year at editor@factcheck.org.

— by Lori Robertson

The post Whoppers of 2013 appeared first on FactCheck.org.

On the day the Senate voted down a series of gun control bills, the National Rifle Association made false and misleading claims in opposing a measure to expand background checks.

• Online ads from the NRA wrongly claimed that “80% of police say background checks will have no effect” on violent crime. The survey cited in the ads by the NRA says nothing of the sort.
• Before and after the vote, the NRA said the measure “would have criminalized certain private transfers of firearms” and required “lifelong friends, neighbors and some family members to get federal government permission” to exchange guns. The measure didn’t expand background checks to such private transfers. It applied to sales by unlicensed individuals at gun shows and on the Internet.

Survey Doesn’t Say That

The NRA’s online ad monopolized the Washington Post‘s homepage, filling the right-hand side of computer screens, on April 17, the day the Senate took up several votes on gun measures, including a bipartisan one to expand background checks.

The ad, along with a video version, urged readers to “tell your senator to listen to police” instead of President Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Senate vote held late that afternoon fell six votes short of the 60 needed to move the bipartisan measure forward. If anyone did follow the NRA’s directive and call their senator, it was under false pretenses.

The ad includes an image of a police badge with a reference to a March survey by a group called PoliceOne.com, a news and resource site for law enforcement officers. The survey wasn’t a scientific poll that aimed to gather responses from a random sample of the nation’s police officers. Rather, it was a self-selected Internet poll, in which more than 15,000 of PoliceOne.com’s 400,000 registered members chose to respond, either because of email solicitation or a link to the survey on the PoliceOne.com website.

And there was no question asking whether “background checks” would have an “effect on violent crime.”

In fact, the survey methodology says that a question on criminal background checks was removed “due to flaws with the question details, highlighted by a handful of users.” We spoke with Jon Hughes, vice president of content for the Praetorian Group, which owns PoliceOne.com, about the NRA ads’ claim. He told us he was “unclear where that came from specifically.” He said that the question that was dropped — because of “an error in how it was phrased” — couldn’t be the source either, as the data didn’t match the claim. Hughes said fact-check articles by the Washington Post and Slate.com on the ad “did a pretty good job of analyzing the data to try to determine where that claim came from.”

We agree with our fact-checking colleagues that the NRA likely derived its false claim from this survey question: “Do you think that a federal law prohibiting private, non-dealer transfers of firearms between individuals would reduce violent crime?” Nearly 80 percent of respondents answered “no.” The question says nothing about requiring background checks, which would be much different than prohibiting private transfers, period. Hughes told us that there was no intent to refer to background checks without actually mentioning them in that question. “We would have said that,” he said, “if that’s what we were aiming for.”

But the question is similar to what the NRA has said in opposing the legislation on background checks. We asked the NRA’s media office for its support for the ad’s claim, but we have not yet received a response.

The PoliceOne.com survey does include some information on background checks, but nothing that pertains to the NRA claim. As a press release from PoliceOne accurately says, “[r]espondents were more split on background checks.” The survey asked, “Would requiring mental health background checks on prospective buyers in all gun sales from federally-licensed dealers reduce instances of mass shooting incidents?” Forty-five percent said no, and 31 percent said yes. The remainder were unsure.

The survey also asked, “What would help most in preventing large scale shootings in public? Choose the selection you feel would have the most impact.” Fourteen percent chose “improved background screening to determine mental wellness of gun purchasers” as having the most impact. Above that: “more permissive concealed carry policies for civilians,” 28.8 percent; “more aggressive institutionalization for mentally ill persons,” 19.6 percent; and “more armed guards/paid security personnel,” 15.8 percent.

NRA Twists Legislation

Both before and after the Senate vote on the background check measure, the NRA distorted what the proposed legislation would do to gun sales and transfers between friends or family members.

Before the vote, Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a letter to the Senate that the group opposed any amendments that would “criminalize the private transfer of firearms through an expansion of background checks. This includes the misguided ‘compromise’ proposal drafted by Senators Joe Manchin, Pat Toomey and Chuck Schumer.”

But the measure only called for expanding background checks for sales by unlicensed individuals at gun shows and online. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of the sponsors of the background check legislation, criticized the NRA for telling people that it would criminalize private transfers. Manchin, who received an A rating from the NRA last year, told MSNBC that the NRA’s claim “is a lie.” He added, “I would hope they would correct that.”

The bill — the “Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act,” which Manchin introduced with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey — would have prohibited unlicensed persons from selling guns at gun shows or over the Internet. Such sellers could complete such transactions, but they would have to visit a licensed dealer and have that dealer run a background check before the sale could be finalized. Transfers between family members are specifically exempt from the requirement. (See page 21 of the full bill, or page 4 of this breakdown of the bill by Manchin.) The bill goes into detail about which family members would be exempt, including spouses, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, spouses of all of the above, and first cousins “if the transferor does not know or have reasonable cause to believe that the transferee is prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm under Federal, State, or local law.”

An NRA member, Manchin said on the Senate floor before the vote that the NRA’s alerts on his legislation were “filled with misinformation.” He said the measure extends background checks to commercial sales at gun shows and online. “Private sales will not require background checks.”

Manchin explained: “You can loan your hunting rifle to your buddy without any new restrictions or requirements. Or you can give or sell a gun to your brother, your neighbor, your coworker without a background check. You can post a gun for sale on the cork bulletin board at your church or your job without a background check. ”

Despite Manchin’s protests, there was no correction coming from the NRA. After the Senate vote, the NRA released a statement that reiterated its stance, saying the measure “would have criminalized certain private transfers of firearms between honest citizens, requiring lifelong friends, neighbors and some family members to get federal government permission to exercise a fundamental right or face prosecution.”

Sure, if these “lifelong friends, neighbors” and third cousins wanted to sell each other guns at gun shows or online, they would indeed have to get a licensed dealer to run a background check first, according to the legislation. But that’s a lot of caveats that the NRA statement conveniently leaves out.

On April 18, the morning after the vote, Manchin called the NRA’s claim about private transfers “disingenuous” at a Wall Street Journal breakfast. “Now, if you have a loving relationship with your family member and your best friend, and you’ve got to sell your gun on the Internet, you better check that relationship.”

— Lori Robertson

The post NRA Misrepresents Police Survey, Legislation appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Vice President Joe Biden exaggerates when he waxes nostalgic about the “good old days” — a time when “everybody, including the NRA, thought background checks made sense.” Biden’s office says he was referring to the NRA’s support for background checks in the early 1990s and its stated support for expanding background checks to include gun shows in 1999.

But vice president’s sentimental journey rides roughshod over the facts:

• In 1991, the NRA endorsed legislation creating a national system of “instant background checks” as an alternative to a seven-day waiting period contained in the proposed Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. But the technology didn’t exist yet. A gun-control advocate said the “instant check bill would have completely gutted the Brady bill by eliminating the waiting period.”
• In 1993, the Brady bill became law with compromise language on background checks. The law required a five-day waiting period until an instant background check system could be established. Background checks would apply only to federally licensed firearm dealers, and the NRA said it opposed attempts to expand background checks to all gun sales as “foolish.”
• In 1998, on the day that the FBI launched the instant check system, the NRA sued to bar the federal agency from keeping identifying information on gun buyers for 90 days, claiming the brief retention of records amounted to a de facto gun registry. Although the NRA lost its suit, Congress would later mandate that the FBI destroy its records within 24 hours of an approved gun sale.
• In 1999, Congress considered expanding background checks to include gun shows after the Columbine High School massacre. The NRA supported a narrow expansion of background checks in a House bill that then-President Clinton said was “plainly ghostwritten by the NRA.” The NRA opposed a more expansive Senate version. The Senate sponsor said that “the gun lobby killed the legislation in House-Senate conference.”

The vice president spoke about the administration’s proposal to reduce gun violence on April 9 at the White House to a group of law enforcement officials. He said relatives of those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., told him that they could not understand why any member of Congress could oppose requiring background checks on all gun sales. Currently, the law requires such checks for people buying guns from federally licensed firearm dealers, but not for private sales, including at gun shows and on the Internet.

In making his case for expanding background checks, Biden recalled his days in Congress when the NRA supported background checks.

Biden, April 9: Look, I thought we reached a consensus on that convicted felons, that people with serious mental illness and adjudicated as such, that fugitives, that wife beaters — they shouldn’t be able to own a gun. If I’m not mistaken, because I did this last time in ’84, everybody — including the NRA — thought background checks made sense. Remember that? Remember those good old days? It made sense. Keep guns out of the hands of those folks.

This is a curious case of Biden looking at the NRA’s history on background checks through rose-colored glasses.

Biden’s office cited the NRA’s support for the creation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, in the early 1990s. It also referred us to a Huffington Post story about how the NRA supported expanding background checks to gun shows after the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School. (For the record, Biden meant to say 1994 — not 1984 — although the dates don’t necessarily matter.)

Let’s first look at the creation of NICS. As we say above, the NRA supported it — but as an alternative to a five-day waiting period and only for licensed gun dealers, and the group has been opposed to its expansion to all private sales ever since.

The concept of NICS came up in 1991, when the Brady bill was being considered as part of a crime bill offered by then-Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. In an essay on the history of the Brady law, Richard Aborn, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and a board member of Handgun Control Inc., wrote that “the NRA tried a last-ditch effort” to block the Brady bill by working with Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska on an amendment to create an instant background check system.

Aborn, 1994: The fatal flaw in the instant check bill was that there was no technology available to conduct the background check instantaneously. The instance check bill would have completely gutted the Brady bill by eliminating the waiting period, thereby depriving law enforcement officials of the time necessary to conduct a background check of the purchaser.

Stevens’ amendment failed, 44-54, in a vote on June 28, 1991. Instead, the Senate that same day passed a compromise amendment by a 67-32 vote that would impose a waiting period of five business days to allow local law enforcement the opportunity to perform a background check. The five-day waiting period would be in effect until the creation of a national instant background check system.

Biden’s crime bill that year passed the Senate, but died in the House. It was the third time that the Brady bill had been introduced and the third time that it had failed to win congressional approval. The fourth time was the charm for gun-control advocates.

On Feb. 22, 1993, Democratic Rep. Charles Schumer of New York, who is now a senator, reintroduced the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. His version included the 1991 compromise language on a five-day waiting period and the creation of an instant check system. In his essay on the history of the Brady bill, Aborn says the bill had unprecedented support and momentum from the start.

Aborn, 1994: When the 103d Congress convened, a record number of sponsors reintroduced the Brady Bill into Congress. … A week earlier in his State of the Union Address, President Clinton had declared to rousing applause: “If you’ll pass the Brady Bill, I’ll sure sign it.” For the first time, a sitting President had stated that he was willing to sign such a bill. In addition, in the 103d Congress, unlike in previous Congresses, the Brady Bill would finally stand on its own, unencumbered by any crime legislation.

As the bill neared final passage, the NRA sought to make changes. GOP Rep. George Gekas of Pennsylvania won approval for an NRA-backed amendment that would end the five-day waiting period after five years, even if the instant check system wasn’t operational. Bill McIntyre, an NRA spokesman, was quoted in a Gekas press release saying that the NRA “worked closely with him on the language and to round up support for it.”

“We recognize a bill is going to become law on this,” Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s chief executive officer, said in an Associated Press story at the time. “We want to make it the best version possible.”

Schumer told New York Newsday that Gekas and another House member who offered a second NRA-backed amendment were under public pressure to vote for the bill, “but they still felt the NRA breathing down their necks, so they threw them a bone.”

Clinton signed the Brady bill on Nov. 30, 1993, and, as required by law, the instant background checks took effect five years later on Nov. 30, 1998. But that same day — as we wrote once before — the NRA filed a lawsuit challenging the NICS regulations, claiming that the rules allowing the FBI to maintain an “audit log” for up to six months (later reduced by the Department of Justice to 90 days) amounted to a de facto firearm registry, contrary to the Brady Act. The NRA suit was dismissed, but since 2004, Congress has inserted language in annual spending bills requiring the FBI to destroy firearm transfer records within 24 hours of approval — as Congress did most recently in fiscal year 2012, when the records requirement was made permanent, according to an Aug. 3, 2012, Congressional Research Service report (page 76) on gun-control legislation.

A month after the Brady bill was signed into law in 1993, the Los Angeles Times wrote about Schumer’s effort to close the so-called gun show loophole, which the paper described as “a loophole large enough to sneak a crate of 9-millimeter pistols through — because they apply only to licensed dealers.” NRA lobbyist Joseph Phillips told the Times that such legislation would be “foolish.”

That was the beginning of a legislative battle over closing the so-called gun show loophole that flared up again in 1999 — which the vice president’s office also cites in support of Biden’s claim about the “good old days.”

Biden’s office referred us to a Jan. 31 story on the Huffington Post website that carried the headline “NRA Supported Universal Background Checks After Columbine Massacre.” That story starts, “In May of 1999, under intense pressure following the Columbine High School massacre, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre told Congress that the gun lobby supported instant background checks at gun shows.” LaPierre testified five weeks after the April 20,1999, massacre at Columbine.

But LaPierre’s stated support for expanding background checks was conditional even then, and he specifically opposed language proposed by Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. This is what LaPierre said at that congressional hearing:

LaPierre, May 27, 1999: We think it’s reasonable to provide for instant checks at gun shows just like at gun stores and pawn shops. But what’s unreasonable is how the proposed Lautenberg legislation ignores the 250,000 prohibited people like felons who’ve walked away from gun stores — instead of being prosecuted for a federal felony for trying to buy a gun.

In its story of the Senate hearing, the Atlanta Journal Constitution said LaPierre didn’t see the need for new gun legislation and quoted him as saying Lautenberg’s proposal in particular would be “a red tape nightmare.”

Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 28, 1999: LaPierre, whose 3 million-member organization waged a fierce lobbying effort against aspects of the Senate bill, urged Congress to enforce existing laws, rather than pass new ones.

LaPierre said the NRA would accept “instant” background checks at gun shows, but would reject the current language of the Senate bill, which allows law enforcement three days to conduct the checks and defines gun shows as any gathering where more than 50 firearms are sold.

“This is a red tape nightmare,” LaPierre said. “It’s a massive . . . federal government bill that gets into everyone’s life if you just mention the word ‘firearm.’ “

LaPierre was referring to a Lautenberg proposal on instant background checks at gun shows that was included in a juvenile justice bill sponsored by then-Sen. Joe Biden. Lautenberg’s amendment to Biden’s bill passed 51-50 on May 20,1999, with Vice President Gore casting the tie-breaking vote.

In an editorial headlined “The NRA Lobby Strikes Back,” the Washington Post wrote that the House responded to Lautenberg’s proposal by introducing a competing NRA-backed bill that the editorial writers called a “decoy ‘background check’ measure.”

Washington Post, June 7, 1999: The NRA leaders’ assault on the Senate bill is camouflaged in a decoy “background check” measure they tout as cutting out “all the bureaucracy” in the Senate bill. Translation: Pull all teeth in the Senate bill and let those gun-show side deals flow unregulated.

The NRA paints its proposal as a “better way” to require background checks at gun shows. It supports instant criminal checks but would kill Senate protections that call for retaining this information for 90 days.

The competing bills resulted in congressional gridlock. The House passed its version in June, and a House-Senate conference committee was created to negotiate a compromise bill. But the New York Times wrote that Congress adjourned for recess in August 1999 without congressional negotiators reconciling the two bills. The Times said the NRA was “particularly concerned about conferees’ approving any measure to regulate gun shows that approaches the strictness of a provision approved by the Senate.”

The senator, on his website, blamed the “gun lobby” for killing the legislation in a House-Senate conference.

Office of Sen. Frank Lautenberg: In 1999, Sen. Lautenberg introduced the first bill in Congress to close the gun show loophole. Later that year, in the wake of the Columbine tragedy, the Senate passed Sen. Lautenberg’s legislation to close the gun show loophole as an amendment to a juvenile justice bill. The legislation passed by one vote, with Vice President Gore casting the tiebreaking vote. However, the gun lobby killed the legislation in House-Senate conference.

We can’t say why the vice president chooses to ignore this legislative history. But, in doing so, the gun-control advocates in his audience that day may have come away with a different impression of the NRA than the gun-control advocates did in the “good old days” of the 1990s.

— Eugene Kiely

The post Biden Revises NRA History on Background Checks appeared first on FactCheck.org.

For more on this issue, see our Feb. 1 story, “Did the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban Work?”

The post Cherry-Picking Assault Weapons Ban Studies appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, incorrectly claimed Obama pulled a bait-and-switch, promising during the campaign not to take away anyone’s guns, but now supporting an assault weapons ban. Obama is not now seeking to take away anyone’s existing guns, and he has for years consistently supported a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday” on Feb. 3, LaPierre was asked by host Chris Wallace what he made of the White House releasing a photo of President Obama skeet shooting at Camp David.

LaPierre, Feb. 3: Well, I make the same thing during the campaign, when he said to people I will not take away your rifle, shotgun, handgun. They leafletted the country with flyers like this, “Obama is not going to take your gun, Obama is going to protect gun rights.” And, now, he’s trying to take away all three.

Back in the 2008 campaign, Obama did say that he would not take away people’s guns. And he recently announced that he supports gun control measures that include a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Since then, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, which seeks to reinstate and expand on the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.

So has Obama flip-flopped? No.

For starters, as we have noted before, the law proposed by Feinstein would grandfather in all of the existing weapons owned by Americans, as did the 1994 assault weapons ban. No weapons were “taken away” from anyone then, and none would be now.

Moreover, Obama has consistently supported reinstatement of an assault weapons ban such as the one Feinstein is now proposing — even as he was vowing not to take away anyone’s guns. When he made his most definitive statement about not taking away people’s guns during the 2008 campaign, Obama added that “there are some common-sense gun safety laws that I believe in.”

Obama, Sept. 9, 2008: I just want to be absolutely clear, alright. So I don’t want any misunderstanding. When ya’ll go home and you’re talking to your buddies, and they say, “Ah, he wants to take my gun away,” you’ve heard it here — I’m on television so everybody knows it —  I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away. … So, there are some common-sense gun safety laws that I believe in. But I am not going to take your guns away. So if you want to find an excuse not to vote for me, don’t use that one. Cause that just ain’t true.

In 2011, Obama penned an op-ed after a Tucson shooting that left six dead and many others wounded, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. As he does now, Obama supported more comprehensive background checks and called for a national discussion on ways to prevent further gun violence.

Obama, March 13, 2011: I know some aren’t interested in participating. Some will say that anything short of the most sweeping anti-gun legislation is a capitulation to the gun lobby. Others will predictably cast any discussion as the opening salvo in a wild-eyed scheme to take away everybody’s guns. And such hyperbole will become the fodder for overheated fundraising letters.

But I have more faith in the American people than that. Most gun-control advocates know that most gun owners are responsible citizens. Most gun owners know that the word “commonsense” isn’t a code word for “confiscation.” And none of us should be willing to remain passive in the face of violence or resigned to watching helplessly as another rampage unfolds on television.

Obama has consistently shown support for an assault weapons ban. In a debate during his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama said assault weapons “have only one purpose, to kill people,” and he called it “a scandal that this president [Bush] did not authorize a renewal of the assault weapons ban.” And anyone who thought Obama had a change of heart since then wasn’t paying very close attention to what he was saying during the 2012 campaign.

During the second presidential debate on Oct. 16, 2012, Obama made clear that he still supported an assault weapons ban.

Obama, Oct. 16, 2012: So my belief is that, a., we have to enforce the laws we’ve already got, make sure that we’re keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. We’ve done a much better job in terms of background checks, but we’ve got more to do when it comes to enforcement.

But I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets. And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced, but part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence — because, frankly, in my hometown of Chicago there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s, they’re using cheap handguns.

Obama made similar comments while speaking before the National Urban League Convention on July 25, 2012.

Obama, July 25, 2012: But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals — that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities. I believe the majority of gun owners would agree that we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons; that we should check someone’s criminal record before they can check out a gun seller; that a mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. These steps shouldn’t be controversial. They should be common sense.

Obama has consistently argued that an assault weapons ban is not the same thing as taking away people’s guns, a point White House Press Secretary Jay Carney reiterated in a Jan. 25 press conference. Carney said the president is advocating “proposals that are very common-sense and not one of which would take away a gun from a single law-abiding American.”

In his Fox News interview, LaPierre argued that Obama’s plan for universal background checks would “turn … into a universal registry of law-abiding people.” LaPierre has argued that there are only two reasons for such a registry: “to tax them or take them.” But as we wrote when he made this claim before, current law bars federal agencies from retaining records on those who pass background checks or from using such records to create a federal gun registry. Nothing in the president’s plan would change that.

It is true that the ban would prohibit Americans from purchasing certain types of weapons. But that’s not the same thing as claiming Obama’s support for the assault weapons ban breaks his campaign promise to not take away people’s rifles, shotguns and handguns. Rather the legislation would seek to ban the future sales of certain types of each.

Here’s the list of weapons that would be banned, from a fact sheet from Feinstein’s office on the proposed bill:

• All semiautomatic rifles that can accept a detachable magazine and have at least one military feature: pistol grip; forward grip; folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; grenade launcher or rocket launcher; barrel shroud; or threaded barrel.
• All semiautomatic pistols that can accept a detachable magazine and have at least one military feature: threaded barrel; second pistol grip; barrel shroud; capacity to accept a detachable magazine at some location outside of the pistol grip; or semiautomatic version of an automatic firearm.
• All semiautomatic rifles and handguns that have a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.
• All semiautomatic shotguns that have a folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; pistol grip; fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 5 rounds; ability to accept a detachable magazine; forward grip; grenade launcher or rocket launcher; or shotgun with a revolving cylinder.

For a more complete list of firearms the bill seeks to prohibit, by name, see a press release issued by Feinstein.

— Robert Farley

The post Did Obama Flip-Flop on Gun Control? appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Both sides in the gun debate are misusing academic reports on the impact of the 1994 assault weapons ban, cherry-picking portions out of context to suit their arguments.

• Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, told a Senate committee that the “ban had no impact on lowering crime.” But the studies cited by LaPierre concluded that effects of the ban were “still unfolding” when it expired in 2004 and that it was “premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun violence.”
• Conversely, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has introduced a bill to institute a new ban on assault weapons, claimed the 1994 ban “was effective at reducing crime.” That’s not correct either. The study concluded that “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

Both sides in the gun debate are selectively citing from a series of studies that concluded with a 2004 study led by Christopher S. Koper, “An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003.” That report was the final of three studies of the ban, which was enacted in 1994 as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

The final report concluded the ban’s success in reducing crimes committed with banned guns was “mixed.” Gun crimes involving assault weapons declined. However, that decline was “offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with [large-capacity magazines].”

Ultimately, the research concluded that it was “premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun crime,” largely because the law’s grandfathering of millions of pre-ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines “ensured that the effects of the law would occur only gradually” and were “still unfolding” when the ban expired in 2004.

The Competing Claims

Now both LaPierre and Feinstein are lifting parts of the reports out of context to bolster their arguments for or against a renewed ban.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 30, LaPierre said of the 1994 ban that “independent studies, including one from the Clinton Justice Department, proved that ban had no impact on lowering crime.” The testimony LaPierre submitted to the committee cited the first of the three major studies on the ban — this one by Koper and Jeffrey A. Roth in 1997 —  in a footnote to support that claim.

The 1997 study said its analysis “failed to produce evidence of a post-ban reduction in the average number of gunshot wounds per case or in the proportion of cases involving multiple wounds.” But that’s not the same as saying the ban had “no impact.” The authors noted that the study was “constrained” to findings of short-term effects, “which are not necessarily a reliable guide to long-term effects.”

And most fundamentally, the authors wrote, “because the banned guns and magazines were never used in more than a fraction of all gun murders, even the maximum theoretically achievable preventive effect of the ban on gun murders is almost certainly too small to detect statistically with only one year of post-ban crime data.” The two later major studies of the ban included more years of analysis and concluded with an “updated assessment” that was published in 2004.

Feinstein, meanwhile, put out a press release touting her proposed legislation, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, which claims that “the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was effective at reducing crime.”

Specifically, Feinstein’s press release cites a Justice Department study of the assault weapons ban that, it says, “found that it was responsible for a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders, holding all other factors equal” (citing the 1997 study) and that “the use of assault weapons in crime declined by more than two-thirds by about nine years after 1994 Assault Weapons Ban took effect” (citing the 2004 study). We briefly addressed this issue in a previous article.

Both sides are cherry-picking from the studies. Here’s a fuller context of what the third and final study actually concluded:

Koper, 2004: Although the ban has been successful in reducing crimes with AWs [Assault Weapons], any benefits from this reduction are likely to have been outweighed by steady or rising use of non-banned semiautomatics with LCMs [large-capacity magazines], which are used in crime much more frequently than AWs. Therefore, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury, as we might have expected had the ban reduced crimes with both AWs and LCMs.

However, the grandfathering provision of the AW-LCM ban guaranteed that the effects of this law would occur only gradually over time. Those effects are still unfolding and may not be fully felt for several years into the future, particularly if foreign, pre-ban LCMs continue to be imported into the U.S. in large numbers. It is thus premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun violence.

In Koper’s Own Words

We were not able to reach Koper directly, but it so happens that he gave a presentation on his findings at a Summit on Reducing Gun Violence in America, held at Johns Hopkins University on Jan. 14 and 15. (His presentation begins at about the 30-minute mark.)

Koper, who is currently an associate professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, provided this summary:

Koper, Jan. 14: What we found in these studies was that the ban had mixed effects in reducing crimes with the banned weaponry due to various exemptions that were written into the law. And as a result, the ban did not appear to effect gun violence during the time it was in effect. But there is some evidence to suggest that it may have modestly reduced shootings had it been in effect for a longer period.

That the law did not have much of an impact on overall gun crime came as little surprise, Koper said.  For one, assault weapons were used in only 2 percent of gun crimes before the ban. And second, existing weapons were grandfathered, meaning there were an estimated 1.5 million pre-ban assault weapons and 25 million to 50 million large-capacity magazines still in the U.S.

“So obviously, these grandfathering provisions had major implications for how the effects of the law would unfold over time,” Koper said.

The study found “clear indications that the use of assault weapons in crime did decline after the ban went into effect” and that assault weapons were becoming rarer as the years passed (this is the part of the study Feinstein seized on). But, he said, the reduction in the use of assault weapons was “offset through at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other semi-automatics equipped with large-capacity magazines.”

And here is the part that LaPierre highlights:

Koper, Jan 14: In general we found, really, very, very little evidence, almost none, that gun violence was becoming any less lethal or any less injurious during this time frame. So on balance, we concluded that the ban had not had a discernible impact on gun crime during the years it was in effect.

But Koper went on to say that an assault weapons ban “could potentially produce at least a small reduction in shootings” if allowed to remain in place for a longer time frame.

Koper, Jan. 14: The grandfathering provisions in the law meant that the effects of the law would occur only very gradually over time. It seems that those effects were still unfolding when the ban was lifted, and indeed they may not have been fully realized for several more years into the future even if the ban had been extended in 2004.

The evidence is too limited for any firm projections, but it does suggest that long term restrictions on these guns and magazines could potentially produce at least a small reduction in shootings.

Other studies, he said, have suggested attacks with semiautomatic guns – particularly those having large magazines – “result in more shots fired, persons hit and wounds inflicted than do attacks with other guns and magazines.” Another study of handgun attacks in Jersey City during the 1990s, he said, “estimated that incidents involving more than 10 shots fired accounted for between 4 and 5 percent of the total gunshot victims in the sample.”

Koper, Jan. 14: So, using that as a very tentative guide, that’s high enough to suggest that eliminating or greatly reducing crimes with these magazines could produce a small reduction in shootings, likely something less than 5 percent. Now we should note that effects of this magnitude could be hard to ever measure in any very definitive way, but they nonetheless could have nontrivial, notable benefits for society. Consider, for example, at our current level of our gun violence, achieving a 1 percent reduction in fatal and non-fatal criminal shootings would prevent approximately 650 shootings annually … And, of course having these sorts of guns, and particularly magazines, less accessible to offenders could make it more difficult for them to commit the sorts of mass shootings that we’ve seen in recent years.”

Koper concluded by saying that “a new ban on large capacity magazines and assault weapons would certainly not be a panacea for gun crime, but it may help to prevent further spread of particularly dangerous weaponry and eventually bring small reductions in some of the most serious and costly gun crimes.”

That kind of guarded language may not make for great sound bites for either side in the gun debate, but it more accurately reflects Koper’s findings and conclusion.

— Robert Farley

The post Did the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban Work? appeared first on FactCheck.org.