https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/06/17/fact-checking-three-democratic-claims-on-assault-rifles-and-guns“What we know is that in States that have imposed those reasonable limitations, there are less gun crimes. There are less homicides.”
— Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), speaking on the Senate floor, June 15
Readers have asked for fact checks of some of the gun rhetoric used by Democrats in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando. In one case, we have already delved into this material, but other claims are new. So, let’s take a look, starting with Murphy’s statement.
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The Facts
Murphy’s staff said he was referring to a chart that appeared in the National Journal in 2015. As it turns out, we had carefully checked this chart when President Obama made a similar but more carefully phrased claim about “gun deaths.” Note that Murphy referred to “homicides” and “gun crimes.”
President Obama earned Two Pinocchios. Readers can check the full fact check, but in summary, we noted that most gun deaths — more than 60 percent in 2013 — are actually suicides.
The data used in the National Journal chart calculates the number of gun-related deaths per 100,000 people by including all gun deaths, including homicides, suicides, accidental gun deaths and legal intervention involving firearms. We removed suicides from the totals and reran the numbers — and in some cases, it made a huge difference. Half of the 10 states with the lowest gun-death rates turn out to be states with less-restrictive gun laws.
Moreover, the counting of gun laws is certainly open to interpretation, so that also affects the outcome. It’s not enough to count laws to figure out the reasons gun deaths are lower in one state than another. One would need to specifically determine whether certain laws had an effect, over time, on the gun-death rate in a state.
So, in this instance, Murphy’s claim is worthy of Three Pinocchios because he specifically referred to homicides, rather gun deaths.
Three Pinocchios
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