The National Rifle Association executive director claimed — without offering any evidence — that the FBI was prevented from fully investigating Omar Mateen prior to his attack in Orlando because of “the Obama administration’s political correctness.”
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.
A series of NRA ads employ images of an intruder breaking into the home of a mother home alone with her baby to make the case that Democratic candidates have “voted to take away your gun rights.” But the implication of the jarring imagery goes far beyond the facts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On Connecticut Public Broadcasting, Managing Editor Lori Robertson talks about how both sides of the gun-control debate are selectively quoting from studies on the effectiveness of the 1994 assault weapons ban. The head of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, claimed the studies found the ban “had no impact on lowering crime,” while Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the ban did reduce crime. Both are wrong. The studies could not conclude that the ban was responsible for a national drop in gun violence,
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.
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.”