Fact check: Democrats distort the record on guns after Nashville shooting

Following a recent shooter incident that took the lives of six persons, including three children, at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, Democrats continued their call for an assault-style weapons ban they have been seeking for years. While Republicans were insisting that further measures on gun ownership would not have stopped such attacks, Democrats accused them of blocking legislation that could protect children from school shootings. Here is a fact check of some of the latest Democratic gun arguments.

“[We’ve had] more school shootings than days in the year so far in 2023.” -Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), CBS’s Face the Nation, April 2

Sen. Murphy cited this data from the K-12 School Shooting Database, claiming that 95 shooting incidents have been reported at schools in the first 93 days of the year. However, the definition of a “school shooting” is broad; it includes any incident where a gun is fired, brandished, or bullet hits school property, regardless of the number of victims, time, day or reason. Therefore, incidents like a gang-related shooting near a school, even if it happened during the weekend, could also be included, which could make the statistic misleading. Only 105 school shooting incidents since the 1970s have had “indiscriminate shooting.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), on the other hand, presented statistics on gun violence against children that didn’t provide an accurate picture of school shootings. The figures indicated that firearms slightly edged out motor vehicle accidents in 2020 as the leading cause of death for children, including juveniles up to 19. However, if the statistics exclude 18- and 19-year-olds, motor vehicle accidents remain the leading cause of child deaths. Additionally, using such statistics while referencing school shootings can be misleading since it includes suicides, gang violence, firearm accidents, and other types of shootings that people might not associate with school shootings.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) characterized assault-style weapons, which include AR-15s, as one of the leading threats to the public. Nevertheless, such weapons are not the primary choice of killers and were not initially designed for military use. While millions of AR-15s are in circulation in the US, data shows that they are not used in the majority of crimes. According to a National Institutes of Health report, under 10% of criminals took advantage of assault weapons.

President Joe Biden’s comparison of owning assault weapons to owning illegal flamethrowers and machine guns is exaggerated. People can legally own flamethrowers in almost every state without the strict requirements required when purchasing guns. Moreover, automatic weapons that were correctly registered before 1986 can still be sold and bought, and hundreds of thousands of them still exist today.

While Democrats continue to push for an assault-style weapons ban, some of their arguments might be misleading as they rely on statistics that include various types of gun violence that might not be related to the issue at hand.

Republicans also had their claims that were misleading, particularly the one where Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) accused them of wanting to help mass shooters gain stabilizing braces. While the House Judiciary Committee postponed the mark-up of a resolution on this issue, the rule in question would not have accomplished what Swalwell claimed.

All in all, both sides should make an effort to be factual about their arguments and not mislead the public.