Tag: gun sales

A federal hate crime investigation is underway after a racially motivated shooting left 3 people dead in Jacksonville, officials say. Here’s what we know | CNN

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A federal hate crime investigation is underway after a White gunman with a swastika-emblazoned assault rifle killed three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday, authorities said.

The shooting, described as being racially motivated, claimed the lives of Angela Michelle Carr, 52, Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., 19, and Jerrald Gallion, 29.

The gunman, identified as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, left behind racist writings and used racial slurs, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said. He was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun, both legally purchased, and targeted Black people as he opened fire inside the store, according to the sheriff.

The Justice Department is now investigating the shooting as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Sunday.

As a hurting community gathered Sunday to honor the victims, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan called to an end to division.

“The division has to stop, the hate has to stop, the rhetoric has to stop,” She added, “We are all the same flesh, blood and bones and we should treat each other that way.”

The attack in Florida is the latest in a number of shootings in recent years where a gunman has targeted Black people, including at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last year and a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

It also marked one of several shootings reported in the US over two days, including one near a parade in Massachusetts and another at a high school football game in Oklahoma.

There have been at least 475 mass shootings in the US so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are wounded or killed, not including the shooter.

As investigators probe the Jacksonville gunman’s motives and history, Waters cautioned against trying to find reason in the attack.

“Our community is grappling to understand why this atrocity occurred. I urge us all not to look for sense in a senseless act of violence,” the sheriff said. “There’s no reason or explanation that will ever account for the shooter’s decisions and actions.”

While Jacksonville grieves those killed, here’s what we know about how the shooting unfolded Saturday, the guns used in the attack, the victims and the ongoing investigation:

The shooter, who lived with his parents in Orange Park in Clay County, left his home around 11:39 a.m. and headed to Jacksonville in neighboring Duval County, Waters told CNN Saturday.

At 12:48 p.m., the suspect stopped at Edward Waters University in New Town, a predominately Black area of Jacksonville, where the sheriff said the suspect put on a bulletproof vest. A TikTok video captured him getting dressed, Waters said.

A student flagged down campus security when they saw the shooter because he “looked out of place,” President and CEO of Edward Waters University, Dr. A. Zachary Faison Jr. told CNN Sunday.

The man immediately got in his vehicle and started to drive away after being confronted by a security officer, who followed him until he left campus, Faison said.

“We don’t know obviously what his full intentions were, but we do know that he came here right before going to the Dollar General,” Faison said. “Members of our university security team reacted almost immediately. I think the reports are in less than 30 seconds after he made contact and drove onto our campus.”

Faison said the campus security actions alone probably saved “dozens of lives.”

“It’s not by happenstance, we believe, that he came to the first historically Black university in this state, first,” Faison said.

University police followed him out of the lot around 12:58 p.m. and flagged down a sheriff’s officer, saying there was a suspicious person on campus, according to the sheriff.

At 1:08 p.m., the gunman shot into a black Kia at the nearby Dollar General parking lot and killed Carr, the sheriff said. He then entered the store and fatally shot Laguerre, the sheriff said.

Others fled out the back exit of the store followed by the suspect seconds later, the sheriff said. He then came back inside and shot at security cameras.

The first 911 call went out at 1:09 p.m., seconds before the third victim, Gallion, walked into the store with his girlfriend.

The gunman then fatally shot Gallion and chased after another person, whom he shot at but didn’t hit, the sheriff said.

At 1:18 p.m., the gunman texted his father and told him to go into his room, where the father found a will and a suicide note, the sheriff said.

Officers entered the store a minute later – 11 minutes from the start of the shooting – and heard one gunshot, which is presumed to be when the gunman shot and killed himself, the sheriff said.

The suspect’s family members called the Clay County Sheriff’s Office at 1:53 p.m., the sheriff said.

Authorities on Sunday played two short video clips of the shooting.

One clip shows the shooter, wearing a tactical vest and blue latex gloves, pointing his weapon at a black Kia car outside the store, and the other shows the shooter walking into the store and pointing his rifle to his right.

“I wanted the people to be able to see exactly what happened in this situation and just how sickening it is,” Waters said.

The shooter did not appear to know the victims and it is believed he acted alone, he said.

“He targeted a certain group of people and that’s Black people,” Waters said at a Saturday news conference. That’s what he said he wanted to kill. And that’s very clear… Any member of that race at that time was in danger.”

The suspect had left behind writings to his parents, the media and federal agents outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate,” the sheriff told reporters Saturday.

Photos of two weapons the gunman had were released by authorities, including one firearm with swastikas drawn on it.

The shooter had no criminal arrest history, and it appears he legally purchased the two firearms earlier this year, the sheriff said.

The shooter was the subject of a 2017 law enforcement call under the state’s Baker Act, which allows people to be involuntarily detained and subject to an examination for up to 72 hours during a mental health crisis.

Waters did not provide details on what led to the Baker Act call in that case but said normally a person who has been detained under the act is not eligible to purchase firearms.

“If there is a Baker Act situation, they’re prohibited from getting guns,” he told CNN Saturday. “We don’t know if that Baker Act was recorded properly, whether it was considered a full Baker Act.”

On Sunday, the sheriff said investigators found the guns appeared to be obtained legally.

“There was no flag that could have come up to stop him from purchasing those guns,” Waters said at a Sunday news conference. “As a matter of fact, it looks as if he purchased those guns completely legally.”

“There was nothing indicating that he should not own guns,” he added.

The sheriff did not provide further details on the Baker Act petition from 2017, but said Sunday it does appear that the shooter, who was 15 at the time, was held for 72 hours and then released.

A relative of the 29-year-old Gallion who was attending Sunday evening’s vigil in honor of the victims described him as a fun, loving young man.

Sabrina Rozier told CNN that the family is holding up the best that they can and that they have yet to tell Gallion’s 4-year-old daughter that her father is gone.

“It’s hurtful, I thought racism was behind us and evidently it’s not,” Gallion said

Dollar General identified one of the victims, Laguerre, as an employee of the store in a statement to CNN Sunday evening.

“The DG family mourns the loss of our colleague Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre, Jr., who, along with two of our customers, were the victims of senseless violence yesterday. We extend our deepest sympathies to their families and friends as we all try to comprehend this tragedy. There is no place for hate at Dollar General or in the communities we serve,” the company said.

Jacksonville is processing the loss, said Florida State Sen. Tracie Davis, who represents the area of Jacksonville where the shooting happened.

“I’m angry, I’m sad to realize we are in 2023 and as a Black person we are still hunted, because that’s what that was,” Davis told CNN. “That was someone planning and executing three people.”

The attack coincided with the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, the iconic civil rights demonstration that called on the government to better protect the rights of Black people.

“[T]his day of remembrance and commemoration ended with yet another American community wounded by an act of gun violence, reportedly fueled by hate-filled animus and carried out with two firearms,” Biden said in a written statement.

“Even as we continue searching for answers, we must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America,” the president added. “We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin.”

Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday called on Congress to ban assault weapons and pass common sense gun safety legislation.

“America is experiencing an epidemic of hate. Too many communities have been torn apart by hatred and violent extremism,” Harris said. “Too many families have lost children, parents, and grandparents. Too many Black Americans live every day with the fear that they will be victims of hate-fueled gun violence—at school, at work, at their place of worship, at the grocery store.”

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August 27, 2023
Federal judge rules Oregon gun law doesn’t violate Second Amendment | CNN Politics

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A federal judge in Oregon ruled on Friday that a new state gun law does not violate the US Constitution, keeping one of the toughest gun laws in the country in place.

US District Court Judge Karin Immergut ruled that Ballot Measure 114’s restrictions on large-capacity magazines that hold more than 10 rounds are constitutional because these magazines are “not commonly used for self-defense, and are therefore not protected by the Second Amendment.”

“Even if LCMs are protected by the Second Amendment, BM 114’s restrictions are consistent with this Nation’s history and tradition of regulating uniquely dangerous features of weapons and firearms to protect public safety,” the ruling said.

The law strengthens background checks and prohibits the sale and transfer of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds. It also closes the “Charleston Loophole,” which allows gun purchases to move forward by default after three days even if a background check has not been completed. The law also requires state police to complete background checks on individuals before a gun sale or transfer is made.

Since passing in November, the measure has faced a number of legal challenges, with the NRA’s legislative action arm lamenting it as “the nation’s most extreme gun control Initiative.”

But Immergut’s ruling maintains that while the Second Amendment does protect against “bearable arms” as listed in the US Constitution, large-capacity magazines are a “subset of magazines” – and therefore, not considered a bearable arm.

“Magazines are an accessory to firearms, rather than a specific type of firearm,” Immergut said. “At the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification through to the late nineteenth century, firearm accessories like cartridge boxes – which held ammunition but, unlike modern magazines, did not feed the ammunition into firearms – were not considered ‘arms’ but instead were considered ‘accouterments,’” the ruling said.

The measure is one of several gun control laws that passed in 2022, the second-highest year for mass shootings in the United States on record.

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July 16, 2023
Pentagon’s suicide prevention committee recommends age limit and waiting period for on-base gun purchases | CNN Politics

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A suicide prevention committee that was established by the Pentagon last year is recommending instituting a waiting period for gun purchases on bases and raising the minimum age for buying firearms in an attempt to reduce the number of suicides among service members.

The Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC) announced the suggested measures as part of a broader set of 127 recommendations to reverse the current trend of suicides in the military, which has steadily increased over the last 15 years.

The committee recommended putting in place a seven day waiting period for gun purchases on Defense Department facilities and a four day waiting period for ammunition purchases.

The committee was created by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in May 2022 to review the Department of Defense’s ongoing suicide prevention efforts. The committee submitted a first set of 10 recommendations to Austin in December before submitting its latest report.

Dr. Craig Bryan, one of the members of the committee, said a high percentage of suicides on base involved guns purchased at base military exchanges.

“There’s a very strong scientific basis showing that waiting period, even as short as seven days, significantly reduce suicide rates,” said Bryan, a lethal means safety expert, in urging the Defense Department to “follow the science.”

The committee also recommended raising the minimum age to purchase weapons on base to 25 years old.

“There’s arguably only one thing that all researchers agree on,” said Bryan, “and that one thing is that taking steps to slow down convenient access to highly lethal methods like firearms is the single most effective strategy for saving lives.”

According to the Defense Department’s annual report, 519 service members died by suicide in 2021, the most recent number for which numbers are available. Though the latest figure is a slight decrease from the previous year’s 582 suicides, the overall number has still been trending upward.

“We will review those closely,” said Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder of the latest recommendations. “I don’t have anything to announce today in terms of what steps we may take, but again this is a very important topic to the Secretary and to the entire Department of Defense.”

However, Dr. Rajeev Ramchand, an epidemiologist with the RAND corporation and another member of the SPRIRC, told reporters on Friday that service members the committee spoke with said they felt the Defense Department’s “current approach … was more of a check-the-block approach” and that suicide prevention was “not discussed frequently.”

Ramchand gave an example of a series of required suicide prevention trainings that took place over a course of several days, saying service members sat in a dark auditorium where many of them fell asleep or “were on their phones.”

“It’s hard to think this is having an effect,” Ramchand said.

In addition to gun safety regulations, the committee also urged the Defense Department to address the lack of mental health services available for service members, including hiring psychologists and other mental health specialists quickly.

“When service members were getting into care, they might not be seen for their second visit for about 6 weeks,” said Rebecca Blais, a sexual assault and suicide expert who is on the committee.

Often, when job openings in mental health services were posted, the hiring process could drag out over a year, at which point the psychologist or other professional was no longer available, Blais said.

In cases where mental health services were not available or already booked, the committee urged the Defense Department to increase insurance payments so service members could seek mental health experts outside of the military’s healthcare system.

Editor’s Note: If you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained counselor.

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February 24, 2023
St. Louis school shooter was flagged in FBI background check but was still able to legally purchase a gun, police say | CNN

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The gunman who killed two people and wounded several others in a school shooting in St. Louis, Missouri, on Monday was flagged by an FBI background check but was still able to purchase the AR-15-style rifle he used in the attack from a private seller, police said.

When 19-year-old Orlando Harris first tried to purchase a gun from a licensed dealer, the background check blocked the sale, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Sgt. Charles Wall said Thursday. But Harris could still legally buy the rifle from a private individual who had bought the firearm from a licensed dealer in 2020, Wall said.

Harris’s family had been worried about his mental health, so when his mother found the rifle in their home, the family contacted police, authorities said.

Missouri does not have a so-called “red flag law” which would allow police to confiscate a person’s gun if they are at risk of causing harm to themselves or others. So St. Louis police arranged for Harris’s rifle to be given to “a third party known to the family” so it could be stored outside the home, police said in a statement to CNN affiliate KMOV.

Yet somehow, when the teen forced his way into the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School on Monday morning, he had the rifle back in his hands.

Armed with the high-powered firearm and an arsenal of over 600 rounds of ammunition and more than a dozen high-capacity magazines, the shooter opened fire into the hallways of the school, which he had just graduated from last year.

As students and teachers scrambled to lock and barricade doors and take shelter, he continued his rampage, fatally shooting talented student Alexandria Bell, 15, and beloved teacher Jean Kuczka, 61, and wounding multiple others.

Within minutes, officers had arrived at the school and quickly engaged the shooter in a gunfight, according to St. Louis Police Commissioner Michael Sack. Harris was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Police are working to determine how the shooter regained possession of the rifle, Sack said Wednesday.

School officials were given access to the bullet-riddled building on Tuesday, but it could be weeks or months before students are brought back to the Central Visual and Performing Arts and Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience high schools, which share a campus, St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Kelvin Adams said Tuesday.

“Obviously with the kinds of things that happened in our building, we need to make sure that the building is ready to receive students and staff and the community, as well,” Adams said. He noted counseling services are available for students and staff.

The attack on the St. Louis high school is at least the 67th shooting to happen on American school grounds this year, marking another devastating moment in the growing reality of gun violence against students and educators.

Witnesses of the shooting describe a horrifying scene in which the school learned there was an active shooter in the building through a coded message announced over the intercom.

As soon as history teacher Kristie Faulstich heard the announcement, she knew what to do.

“I instantly but calmly went to lock my door and turn off the lights. I then turned to my kids and told everyone to get in the corner,” she said.

Teachers and law enforcement have applauded how students conducted themselves during the attack.

“We’ve had teenagers and athletes – they don’t always listen – but on Monday they sure did,” Sack said Wednesday. “They did what their teachers instructed them to do, they do what the officers instructed them to do, despite the fact that you can see that many of them were traumatized. You can see their faces, you can read in their eyes.”

“I absolutely commend my students for their response,” Faulstich said. “Even in the moments when they were hearing gunfire going on all around they stood quiet and I know they did it to keep each other safe.”

Several students escaped the building by leaping from windows, students and teachers have said.

There were seven security personnel at the school when the gunman arrived, but he did not enter the building through a checkpoint where security guards were stationed and instead had to force his way in, according to DeAndre Davis, director of safety and security for Saint Louis Public Schools.

Police officers arrived at the school within four minutes of the active shooter being reported, according to Sack, who has repeatedly credited swift law enforcement response, locked doors and training for preventing further deaths.

“The fact that it takes this level of response to stop a shooting like this because people have access to these weapons of war and can bring them into our schools can never be normal,” said St. Louis Board of Education President Matt Davis.

The school district has been working to add gun safety to the curriculum, Superintendent Adams said at a press conference Tuesday.

“The gun safety initiative, quite frankly, was a plan put together to try to address the kind of issues that happen outside of our school district, outside of our school buildings, in terms of the number of students who have been shot in the city of St. Louis, and that die, quite frankly, as a result of incidents that happened outside of the school environment,” Adams said.

“Never did I think I would be standing here today having a conversation about a staff (member) and a student” being shot, Adams said, pausing to keep composure as his voice began to break.

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October 27, 2022
Man who sold gun used in Texas synagogue standoff sentenced to 95 months in prison | CNN

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The man who sold a pistol to a gunman who used it to hold four people hostage at a Colleyville, Texas, synagogue in an 11-hour standoff in January has been sentenced to 95 months in prison, the US attorney for the Northern District of Texas announced.

Henry “Michael” Dwight Williams, who had been indicted in February, pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm in June. He was sentenced by Chief US District Judge David Godbey to seven years and 11 months in federal prison on Monday, court records show. CNN has reached out to Williams’ attorney, Suzy Vanegas, for comment.

On January 15, FBI agents recovered a pistol from the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue, where Malik Faisal Akram, a British national, had held four people hostage before he was fatally shot by federal law enforcement agents, a criminal complaint states.

Williams, who had previously been convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, sold the semi-automatic Taurus G2C pistol to Akram on January 13, according to the complaint.

The FBI tied Williams to Akram through cell phone records. When agents first interviewed Williams on January 16, he told them that he remembered meeting a man with a British accent, but that he couldn’t recall the man’s name, according to the release from the US attorney’s office.

Agents reinterviewed Williams on January 24, after he was arrested on an outstanding state warrant. Williams then confirmed he sold Akram the handgun at an intersection in South Dallas. “This defendant, a convicted felon, had no business carrying – much less buying and selling – firearms,” US Attorney Chad Meacham said.

“We are grateful to the FBI, which sprang into action as soon as the synagogue hostage crisis began, and to the agents who worked tirelessly to track the weapon from Mr. Akram to the defendant.”

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October 26, 2022
Fact check: Biden makes 5 false claims about guns, plus some about other subjects | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden made false claims about a variety of topics, notably including gun policy, during a series of official speeches and campaign remarks over the last two weeks.

He made at least five false claims related to guns, a subject on which he has repeatedly been inaccurate during his presidency. He also made a false claim about the extent of his support from environmental groups. And he used incorrect figures about the population of Africa, his own travel history and how much renewable energy Texas uses.

Here is a fact check of these claims, plus a fact check on a Biden exaggeration about guns. The White House declined to comment on Tuesday.

Beau Biden and red flag laws

In a Friday speech at the National Safer Communities Summit in Connecticut, Biden spoke of how a gun control law he signed in 2022 has provided federal funding for states to expand the use of gun control tools like “red flag” laws, which allow the courts to temporarily seize the guns of people who are deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. After mentioning red flag laws, Biden invoked his late son Beau Biden, who served as attorney general of Delaware, and said: “As my son was the first to enforce when he was attorney general.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. Delaware did not have a red flag law when Beau Biden was state attorney general from 2007 to 2015. The legislation that created Delaware’s red flag program was named the Beau Biden Gun Violence Prevention Act, but it was passed in 2018, three years after Beau Biden died of brain cancer. (In 2013, Beau Biden had pushed for a similar bill, but it was rejected by the state Senate.) The president has previously said, correctly, that a Delaware red flag law was named after his son.

Delaware was far from the first state to enact a red flag law. Connecticut passed the first such state law in the country in 1999.

Stabilizing braces

In the same speech, the president spoke confusingly of his administration’s effort to make it more difficult for Americans to purchase stabilizing braces, devices that are attached to the rear of pistols, most commonly AR-15-style pistols, and make it easier to fire them one-handed.

“Put a pistol on a brace, and it…turns into a gun,” Biden said. “Makes them where you can have a higher-caliber weapon – a higher-caliber bullet – coming out of that gun. It’s essentially turning it into a short-barreled rifle, which has been a weapon of choice by a number of mass shooters.”

Facts First: Biden’s claims that a stabilizing brace turns a pistol into a gun and increases the caliber of a gun or bullet are false. A pistol is, obviously, already a gun, and “a pistol brace does not have any effect on the caliber of ammunition that a gun fires or anything about the basic functioning of the gun itself,” said Stephen Gutowski, a CNN contributor who is the founder of the gun policy and politics website The Reload.

Biden’s assertion that the addition of a stabilizing brace can “essentially” turn a pistol into a short-barreled rifle is subjective; it’s the same argument his administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has made in support of its attempt to subject the braces to new controls. The administration’s regulatory effort is being challenged in the courts by gun rights advocates.

Gun manufacturers and lawsuits

Repeating a claim he made in his 2022 State of the Union address and on other occasions, Biden said at a campaign fundraiser in California on Monday: “The only industry in America you can’t sue is the – is the gun manufacturers.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim is false, as CNN and other fact-checkers have previously noted. Gun manufacturers are not entirely exempt from being sued, nor are they the only industry with some liability protections. Notably, there are significant liability protections for vaccine manufacturers and, at present, for people and entities involved in making, distributing or administering Covid-19 countermeasures such as vaccines, tests and treatments.

Under the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, gun manufacturers cannot be held liable for the use of their products in crimes. However, gun manufacturers can still be held liable for (and thus sued for) a range of things, including negligence, breach of contract regarding the purchase of a gun or certain damages from defects in the design of a gun.

In 2019, the Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit against gun manufacturer Remington Arms Co. to continue. The plaintiffs, a survivor and the families of nine other victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, wanted to hold the company – which manufactured the semi-automatic rifle that was used in the 2012 killing – partly responsible by targeting the company’s marketing practices, another area where gun manufacturers can be held liable. In 2022, those families reached a $73 million settlement with the company and its four insurers.

There are also more recent lawsuits against gun manufacturers. For example, the parents of some of the victims and survivors of the 2022 massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, have sued over the marketing practices of the company that made the gun used by the killer. Another suit, filed by the government of Buffalo, New York, in December over gun violence in the city, alleges that the actions of several gun manufacturers and distributors have endangered public health and safety. It is unclear how those lawsuits will fare in the courts.

– Holmes Lybrand contributed to this item.

The NRA and lawsuits

At a campaign fundraiser in California on Tuesday, Biden said the National Rifle Association, the prominent gun rights advocacy organization, itself cannot be sued.

“And the fact that the NRA has such overwhelming power – you know, the NRA is the only outfit in the nation that we cannot sue as an institution,” Biden said. “They got – they – before this – I became president, they passed legislation saying you can’t sue them. Imagine had that been the case with tobacco companies.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. While gun manufacturers have liability protections, no law was ever passed to forbid lawsuits against the NRA. The NRA has faced a variety of lawsuits in recent years.

Machine guns

At the same Tuesday fundraiser in California, Biden said that he taught the Second Amendment in law school, “And guess what? It doesn’t say that you can own any weapon you want. It says there are certain weapons that you just can’t own.” One example Biden cited was this: “You can’t own a machine gun.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim is false. The Second Amendment does not explicitly say people cannot own certain weapons – and the courts have not interpreted it to forbid machine guns. In fact, with some exceptions, people in more than two-thirds of states are allowed to own and buy fully automatic machine guns as long as those guns were legally registered and possessed prior to May 19, 1986, the day President Ronald Reagan signed a major gun law. There were more than 700,000 legally registered machine guns in the US as of May 2021, according to official federal data.

Federal law imposes significant national restrictions on machine gun purchases, and the fact that there is a limited pool of pre-May 19, 1986 machine guns means that buying these guns tends to be expensive – regularly into the tens of thousands of dollars. But for Americans in most of the country, Biden’s claim that you simply “can’t” own a machine gun, period, is not true.

“It’s not easy to obtain a fully automatic machine gun today, I don’t want to give that impression – but it is certainly legal. And it’s always been legal,” Gutowski said in March, when Biden previously made this claim about machine guns.

California, where Biden made this remark on Tuesday, has strict laws restricting machine guns, but there is a legal process even there to apply for a state permit to possess one.

The ‘boyfriend loophole’

In the Friday speech to the National Safer Communities Summit, Biden said “we fought like hell to close the so-called boyfriend loophole” that had allowed people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence to buy and possess guns if the victim was not someone they were married to, living with or had a child with. Biden then said that now “we finally can say that those convicted of domestic violence abuse against their girlfriend or boyfriend cannot buy a firearm, period.”

Facts First: Biden’s categorical claim that such offenders now “cannot buy a firearm, period” is an exaggeration, though Biden did sign a law in 2022 that made significant progress in closing the “boyfriend loophole.” That 2022 law added “dating” partners to the list of misdemeanor domestic violence offenders who are generally prohibited from gun purchases – but in a concession demanded by Republicans, the law says these offenders can buy a gun five years after their first conviction or completion of their sentence, whichever comes later, if they do not reoffend in the interim.

It’s also worth noting that the law’s new restriction on dating partners applies only to people who committed the domestic violence against a someone with whom they were in or “recently” had been in a “continuing” and “serious” romantic or intimate relationship. In other words, it omits people whose offense was against partners from their past or someone they dated casually.

Marium Durrani, vice president of policy at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said there are “definitely some gaps” in the law, “so it’s not a blanket end-all be-all,” but she said it is “really a step in the right direction.”

Biden said at a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Saturday: “Let me just say one thing very seriously. You know, I think this is the first time – and I’ve been around, as I said, a while – in history where, last week, every single environmental organization endorsed me.”

Facts First: It’s not true that every single environmental organization had endorsed Biden. Four major environmental organizations did endorse him the week prior, the first time they had issued a joint endorsement, but other well-known environmental organizations have not yet endorsed in the presidential election.

The four groups that endorsed Biden together in mid-June were the Sierra Club, NextGen PAC, and the campaign arms of the League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council. That is not a complete list of every single environmental group in the country. For example, Environmental Defense Fund, The Nature Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, Earthjustice and Greenpeace, in addition to some lesser-known groups, have not issued presidential endorsements to date.

Biden’s claim of an endorsement from every environmental group comes amid frustration from some activists over his recent approvals of fossil fuel projects.

In official speeches last Tuesday and last Wednesday and at a press conference the week prior, Biden claimed that Africa’s population would soon reach 1 billion. “You know, soon – soon, Africa will have 1 billion people,” he said last Wednesday.

Facts First: This is false. Africa’s population exceeded 1 billion in 2009, according to United Nations figures; it is now more than 1.4 billion. Sub-Saharan Africa alone has a population of more than 1.1 billion.

At a campaign fundraiser in Connecticut on Friday, Biden spoke about reading recent news articles about the use of renewable energy sources in Texas. He said, “I think it’s 70% of all their energy produced by solar and wind because it is significantly cheaper. Cheaper. Cheaper.”

Facts First: Biden’s “70%” figure is not close to correct. The federal Energy Information Administration projected late last year that Texas would meet 37% of its electricity demand in 2023 with wind and solar power, up from 30% in 2022.

Texas has indeed been a leader in renewable energy, particularly wind power, but the state is far from getting more than two-thirds of its energy from wind and solar alone. The organization that provides electricity to 90% of the state has a web page where you can see its current energy mix in real time; when we looked on Wednesday afternoon, during a heat wave, the mix included 15.8% solar, 10.2% wind and 6.6% nuclear, while 67.1% was natural gas or coal and lignite.

In his Friday speech at the National Safer Communities Summit, Biden made a muddled claim about his past visits to Afghanistan and Iraq – saying that “you know, I spent a lot of time as president, and I spent 30-some times – visits – many more days in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim that he has visited Afghanistan and Iraq “30-some times” is false – the latest in a long-running series of exaggerations about his visits to the two countries. His presidential campaign said in 2019 that he made 21 visits to these countries, but he has since continued to put the figure in the 30s. And he has not visited either country “as president.”

At another campaign fundraiser in California on Monday, Biden reprised a familiar claim about his travels with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who is, like him, a former vice president.

“It wasn’t appropriate for Barack to be able to spend a lot of time getting to know him, so it was an assignment I was given. And I traveled 17,000 miles with him, usually one on one,” Biden said.

Facts First: Biden’s “17,000 miles” claim remains false. Biden has not traveled anywhere close to 17,000 miles with Xi, though they have indeed spent lots of time together. This is one of Biden’s most common false claims as president, a figure he has repeated over and over in speeches despite numerous fact checks.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noted in 2021 that Biden and Xi often did not even travel parallel routes to their gatherings, let alone physically travel together. The only apparent way to get Biden’s mileage past 17,000, Kessler found, is to add the length of Biden’s flight journeys between Washington and Beijing, during which Xi was not with him.

A White House official told CNN in early 2021 that Biden was adding up his “total travel back and forth” for meetings with Xi. But that is very different than traveling “with him” as Biden keeps saying, especially in the context of his boasts about how well he knows Xi. Biden has had more than enough time to make his language more precise.

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April 12, 2021