The Fact Checker
"Senator, there needs to be a change in the culture of prosecution
at the entire federal level. It's a national disgrace. The fact is, we
could dramatically cut crime in this country with guns and save lives
all over this country if we would start enforcing the 9,000 federal laws
we have on the books.”
—
National Rifle Association Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre, testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jan. 30, 2013
Many readers have asked us about this claim of 9,000
federal gun laws, which was later repeated by Chris Wallace on Fox News
Sunday when LaPierre appeared on that program. When we checked with NRA
spokesman Andrew Arulanandam for the sourcing, he said that LaPierre had
misspoken.
“If anything, he understated the number of laws,” Arulanandam said, noting that the NRA generally refers to “20,000 laws.”
The Pinocchio Test
By any reasonable measure, this is suspicious figure. Its
origin is murky, and it is inconceivable that the same number of gun
laws would exist now as some five decades ago.
Moreover, even
experts who favor the NRA’s agenda have their doubts about the figure or
its relevance. It may well be the case that there are “thousands” of
laws, but what does that mean? What does counting statutes, or local
regulations, say about the quality or effectiveness of those laws?
We
don’t play gotcha here at The Fact Checker, so we accept that LaPierre
misspoke when he said 9,000 federal laws rather than 20,000 laws across
the nation. But that slip of the tongue actually points out the fuzzy
nature of the claim.
This 20,000 figure appears to be an
ancient guesstimate that has hardened over the decades into a constantly
repeated, never-questioned talking point. It could be lower, or higher,
depending on who’s counting what.
UPDATE: Anthony, and a number of other readers, asked
why this merited Three Pinocchios. The Pinnochio rating is always the
hardest part of the column and certainly is subject to debate.
In
this case, the rating is based on the fact that the figure had been
used for almost five decades, without much research or diligence to back
it up. Both sources cited by the NRA--Wright and Halbrook--said the
figure was not particularly credible, with Wright saying it was not
relevant and Halbrook labeling it as hyperbole. Korwin outlined a number
of issues with the figure in his essay.
Ultimately, it comes
down to the fact that the “20,000”--or “9,000”--amounts to false
precision. The argument the NRA wants to make is no less credible if the
talking point was that there are “many, many laws,” rather than 20,000
or 9,000. We wavered between Two and Three Pinocchios, but the fact that
this factoid had been repeated so often and for so long is ultimately
what tipped it to three.
Three Pinocchios
