Attacking Bernie Sanders for his unusual record on guns, Hillary Clinton blamed Vermont’s lax gun laws for crime in New York.
When The Washington Post analyzed her claim, however, they deemed it a “significant factual error and/or obvious contradiction.”
“Most of the guns that are used in crimes and violence and killings in New York come from out of state. And the state that has the highest per capita number of those guns that end up committing crimes in New York come from Vermont,” Clinton said when speaking at a gun violence panel on Monday.
By blaming other states that have fewer restrictions on gun ownership, Clinton preserves her arguing for gun control reducing crime by blaming outside forces.
“Clinton has been using gun control to cast a significant difference between herself and Bernie Sanders, repeatedly pointing out pro-gun votes that Sanders cast in Congress,” Michelle Ye Hee Lee noted for The Post.
Vermont’s rural character has preserved bipartisan support of gun ownership, and Sanders has drawn ire from other liberals. Slate accused him of being a “gun nut,” though he’s supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons before.
The reality of Vermont’s role of transporting guns used in crime, however, doesn’t mesh with Clinton’s attacks. So far as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can tell through “tracing,” Vermont’s low population indeed pushed their per capita rate to the above other states. Those guns, however, accounted for 1 percent of guns traced: only 55 of the 4,585 guns. New York itself was responsible for 1,397, or 30 percent, of the recovered guns.
The Clinton campaign claimed that the per capita rate is a “critically important number” that “shows just how dangerous Vermont’s laws are relative to other states.”
Strictly speaking, the state that’s most responsible for gun crimes in New York is … New York. The Clinton campaign distorted that truth by referring to an untrustworthy statistic.
Were all states as restrictive as New York in their gun laws, the argument implies, crimes committed with guns would be lower, and Americans would be safer.
It’s similar to a local grocery store complaining that, were the state to ban out-of-state companies from operating grocery stores, the community would be better off.
Only California had a lower number of guns trafficked into New York (49), but the state’s vast distance from New York seems a more likely reason for its low number than its restrictive gun laws.
“As much as the Clinton campaign may want to blame Sanders or his home state for the guns in New York, this is a misleading data point,” Hee wrote.
If the Clinton campaign wants to persuade voters of the wisdom of restrictive gun laws, they should be honest and frank. Playing games with statistics only muddles attempts to craft wise policy.
