NRA-ILA - New Years Resolutions of the Rich and Anti-Gun (Actually just Hillary)

Debunking Clinton’s Gun Control Agenda

Clinton wants to bring back her husband’s failed ban on assault weapons.

The Facts: The congressionally-mandated study of the federal "assault weapon" law found that: "At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders." (Urban Institute, "Impact Evaluation of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994," March 13, 1997, p. 3.)

Clinton wants so-called universal background checks.

The Facts: Going back to the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, every firearm used in a high-profile mass shooting went through a background check. Not a single one was bought from an "unregulated private sale," through "the Internet," or in "the parking lot at a gun show."

Clinton is open to Australia-style gun confiscation.

The Facts: There is no conclusive evidence Australia’s 1996 gun control law made the people of Australia any safer. Don Weatherburn, director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, told PolitiFact that the evidence is "far from conclusive." Harvard's David Hemenway, admitted, "We really don't know." While it is true that in the years after the law took effect, gun homicides and suicides declined. But they were declining before it took effect. Gun murders also subsided in this country after 1996. They fell in New Zealand, which declined to embrace the Australian approach.



Catherine Mortensen
Media Liaison
NRA, Institute for Legislative Action