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Truth Test: NRA attacks Clinton

The National Rifle Association is out with a television ad slamming Hillary Clinton on gun control.

The National Rifle Association is out with a television ad slamming Hillary Clinton on gun control.

A woman named Kristi McMain looks straight at the camera and recounts how she was attacked in parking garage by a man wielding a knife.

“But I carry a pistol. I fight back,” McMain says. “That’s why I’m still here."

She’s telling a true story. McMain shot her attacker in the neck and buttocks in March after he demanded money and tried to get inside her car.

What she says after that, however, is the crux of our truth test.

“Every woman has a right to defend herself with a gun if she chooses,” McMain says. “Hillary Clinton disagrees with that. Don’t let politicians take away your right to own a gun.”

CLAIM: Hillary Clinton disagrees with women’s right to protect themselves with guns
VERDICT: Overstatement

While the Democratic nominee for president is in favor of numerous forms of gun control, she has never said she favors repealing the Second Amendment or restricting a woman’s ability to carry a gun for protection.

What she supports are regulations on firearms like universal background checks, making it a federal crime to buy a gun for someone who can’t pass a background check and keeping “military-style weapons off our streets.”

"I'm not looking to repeal the Second Amendment. I'm not looking to take people's guns away," Clinton told Fox News anchor Chris Wallace in July. "But I am looking for more support for the reasonable efforts that need to be undertaken to keep guns out of the wrong hands."

As a U.S. senator, Clinton backed bills to require photo IDs and safety lessons for all new gun owners, increase the buying age from 18 to 21 and called for an assault rifle ban.

The “smoking gun” the NRA often cites to prove Clinton wants to repeal The Second Amendment is a comment she made about a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case called District of Columbia v. Heller.

This is the case that overturned Washington D.C.’s ban on handguns by affirming an individual right to own a gun.

Clinton said the Supreme Court made the wrong decision.

Here’s what her campaign says her reasoning is, as reported previously by Politifact: “Heller was wrongly decided in that cities and states should have the power to craft common sense laws to keep their residents safe."

She is on record supporting the idea of an individual right to be a lawful gun owner, but promotes what she calls “reasonable restrictions.”

That’s similar to the argument that former President George W. Bush’s administration made about the same case before the Supreme Court.

CLAIM: Donald Trump supports the right to own a gun
VERDICT: True

Trump has made a defense of gun rights a central theme of his campaign, arguing against new gun controls.
It is worth noting that Trump has taken positions in the past that are of concern to the gun lobby, like supporting an assault weapons ban in a book published in the year 2000.

And more recently, he supported the idea of banning gun sales to people on the federal no-fly list, something the NRA strongly opposes.

BOTTOM LINE: The ad tries to take Clinton's position to an extreme end that she's never actually embraced.
It would have been more accurate to simply describe her as campaigning for more gun control, something that Trump generally opposes.

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