Leading Republicans on Friday defended gun rights at the National Rifle Association convention with some misleading claims about the effectiveness of gun restrictions, gun ownership trends and school shootings.
Here is a fact check.
What was said
“Gun bans don’t work. Look at Chicago. If they did, Chicago wouldn’t be the hell of the murder it has been for too long.” “Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas.”
This is misleading. Opponents of gun restrictions often cite Chicago as a case study of why tough gun laws do little to prevent homicides. This argument, however, is based on erroneous assumptions about the city’s gun laws and armed violence.
There were more gun killings in Chicago than in any other city in the United States in 2020, fueling the perception that it is the capital of the country’s armed violence. But Chicago is also the third largest city in the country. Adjusted by population, the rate of gun homicides was 25.2 per 100,000, the 26th highest in the country in 2020, according to data compiled by the arms control group Everytown for Gun Safety.
The three cities with the highest gun homicide rates: Jackson, Mississippi; Gary, Ind .; and St. Louis: They had twice as much rates as Chicago or more. All are in states with more permissive gun laws than Illinois.
Chicago’s reputation for having the country’s strictest gun control measures is obsolete. Mr Cruz cited a ban on handguns in the city, noting that the Supreme Court overturned the ban in 2010. A court of appeals also overturned a ban on carrying concealed weapons in the city. Illinois in 2012, and the state began allowing concealed weapons possession in 2013 as part of the court decision.
Today, Illinois has tougher restrictions than most states, but does not lead the group, ranking sixth in Everytown’s assessment of the strength of state gun control laws and number 8 in a report published by the United States. Giffords Law Center, another gun control group. By contrast, the state ranked 41st in a Cato Libertarian Institute gun rights assessment.
Proponents of gun control have also argued that the mosaic nature of gun laws in the country makes it difficult for a state like Illinois with strict book restrictions to enforce them in practice. A 2017 study commissioned by the city of Chicago found, for example, that 60 percent of the weapons used in crime and recovered in Chicago came from outside the state, with neighboring Indiana as the main source.
What was said
“As for the so-called assault rifles, which the left and the media love to demonize, these weapons were banned for 10 years between 1994 and 2004. And the Department of Justice examined the effect of the ban and concluded that it had no statistically significant effect. on violent crimes. “- Mr. Cruz
This is an exaggeration. The Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act of 1994 prohibited the possession, transfer, or domestic manufacture of some semi-automatic assault weapons for 10 years. The Justice Department commissioned a study in 2004 on the effect of the 1994 assault weapons ban.
The study found that if renewed, “the effects of the ban on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for a reliable measure,” as assault was rarely used in crimes.
But Christopher Koper, a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, and the lead author of the study, has repeatedly said the ban had a variety of effects in general.
“My work is often misleadingly quoted as not offering a complete picture,” Koper told The New York Times earlier. “These laws can modestly reduce overall shootings” and reduce the number and severity of mass shootings.
What was said
“We know that there are no more weapons per capita in this nation today than there were 50 or 100 years ago. That is worth noting. In 1972, the rate of possession of weapons per capita in the United States was 43 percent. “The rate is 42 percent in 2021. The rate of gun ownership has not changed. However, acts of evil like the ones we saw this week are on the rise.” – Mr. Cruz
This is misleading. Arguing that cultural problems, rather than the prevalence of weapons, are to blame for the mass shootings, Mr. Cruz combined and distorted gun ownership metrics.
The number of weapons per capita in the United States roughly doubled between 1968 and 2012, according to the Congressional Research Service, from one weapon for every two people to one weapon per person. And it has continued to rise since 2018, to about 1.2 weapons per person in 2018, according to the Swiss-based Small Arms Survey.
Mr. Cruz was probably referring to a Gallup poll on gun ownership. It is not a per capita measure, but participants were asked if they had a gun in their home, with 43% saying yes in 1972 and 42% in 2021. Historical surveys at the NORC Research Center in the US The University of Chicago shows, however, that the percentage of American households that own weapons has decreased by about half during the 1970s to about one-third in recent years.
What was said
“Downtown schools rarely have this kind of mass shooting. I didn’t know it until recently. Think about it. They rarely have this problem despite being located in very harsh neighborhoods, in many cases where there are huge levels. Crime and violence are much more dangerous outside of school than inside. , armed guards “. Former President Donald J. Trump
This is misleading. Mr. Trump says one-person shootings have occurred primarily in suburban and rural schools, but the idea that city schools have been saved from armed violence is inaccurate. In addition, the suggestion of Mr. Trump that the presence of armed guards deters mass shootings is not corroborated by the evidence.
A 2020 report from the Government Accountability Office examined 318 shootings from the 2009-10 school year to the 2018-19 school year. Nearly half, 47 percent, of the shootings occurred in urban areas, and the report noted that “urban, poorer, high-minority schools had more shootings overall.”
There is little evidence that the presence of police or armed security prevents or deters shootings in schools. A 2019 review by the New York State School Board Association found that research on the subject has been “inconclusive.” Investigators examined 133 school shootings between 1980 and 2019 in an article last year and found “no association between having an armed officer and deterring violence in such cases.”
What was said
“It is even reported that the Biden administration is considering putting UN bureaucrats in charge of your Second Amendment rights.” – Mr. Trump
False. This was a reference to reports that the Biden administration was considering re-entering into an international arms treaty. But Mr. Trump is greatly exaggerating what this treaty would do.
The 2014 Arms Trade Treaty regulates international sales of conventional weapons (such as tanks, combat vehicles, warships, missiles, and firearms). It does not place United Nations officials in charge of gun laws in the United States.
The United States was a signatory to the treaty, but did not ratify it, as more than 100 nations have done. Mr. Trump announced that he would withdraw his signature from the United States during a speech to the NRA in 2019.
The treaty seeks to establish international rules for regulating arms sales between countries and addressing the illegal sale of arms. It prohibits the sale of weapons to nations that are under arms embargo or that will use them to commit genocide, terrorism, war crimes or attacks on civilians.
In the preamble, the treaty explicitly reaffirms “the sovereign right of any state to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory, in accordance with its own legal or constitutional system.” The Congressional Research Service noted that the treaty “does not affect arms sales or trade among private citizens of a country” and, even if ratified, “would probably not require significant policy changes.” the law or the law “because” the United States already has strong export control laws. “