WASHINGTON –
Speakers at the National Weapons Association’s annual meeting attacked the non-existent Chicago gun ban, ignored security improvements at a school in Texas where children were slaughtered, and grossly distorted national gun and crime statistics while repelling any tightening of laws. weapons.
A look at some of the statements:
TEXAS SAINT. TED CRUIS: “Weapons bans don’t work. Look at Chicago. If they worked, Chicago wouldn’t be the hell of a murder hole it has been for too long.”
THE FACTS: Chicago hasn’t banned guns in more than a decade. And in 2014, a federal judge lifted the city’s ban on gun shops. Major NRA supporters, such as Cruz, may know this, given that it was the NRA that sued Chicago over its old gun ban and challenged the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled it unconstitutional in 2010.
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Former US President Donald Trump: “Classroom doors need to be hardened so they can be locked from the inside and closed to intruders from the outside.”
THE FACTS: As common sense as it may sound, it can backfire in a terrifying way, experts warn.
The classroom door lock is one of the most basic and widely recommended safety measures at school. But in Uwalde, she kept the victims inside and the police outside.
Nearly 20 police officers stood in the hallway in front of the school in the classroom for more than 45 minutes before agents used a master key to open the locked classroom door.
And Trump’s proposal does not take into account what would happen if class members were trapped behind a locked door and one of the students was an aggressor in future attacks.
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CRUISE: “The percentage of gun ownership has not changed.”
THE FACTS: This is misleading. The percentage of American households with at least one gun in the home has not changed significantly in the last 50 years. But the number of assault rifles, such as those used in school shooting in Uwalde and dozens of other school shootings, has skyrocketed after lawmakers allowed a 1994 ban on such weapons to expire in 2004.
In the years before and after this ban, about 8.5 million AR-platform rifles were in circulation in the United States. Since the ban was lifted, rifles – what the industry calls “modern sport rifles” – have grown in popularity. The National Foundation for Sport Shooting estimates that in 2020 there are nearly 20 million in circulation.
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CRUISE: “If Uwalde receives a subsidy to upgrade school security, they might make changes that would stop the shooter and kill him there on the ground before hurting any of these innocent children and teachers.”
THE FACTS: This statement ignores the fact that Uvalde has doubled its school security budget and spent years upgrading student protection. None of this stopped the shooter, who killed 19 students and two teachers.
The district’s annual budgets show that the school system has grown from $ 204,000 in 2017 to $ 435,000 this year. The district developed a safety plan back in 2019, which included equipping schools with four employees and four counselors. He had installed a fence and invested in a program that monitors social media for threats and purchased software to check on school visitors.
The grant, which Cruz says would be life-saving, stems from a failed 2013 bill that planned to help schools hire more armed officers and install armored doors. Uwalde’s school did have an officer, but the man was not on campus at the time the shooter entered the building. And Cruz’s call for armored doors may not have worked in this case, given that police failed to break through the locked door of the classroom where the shooter killed children and teachers.
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AP EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a look at the veracity of the statements of political figures.
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