Left-leaning Politifact twisted itself in knots to declare Sen. Ted Cruz’s data on gun prosecutions declining under President Obama as “mostly false.”
In fact, the Republican senator correctly stated on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on Nov. 8 that “Under President Bush, prosecution of gun crimes was 30 percent higher than it is under President Obama.”
Politifact first accused Mr. Cruz of “cherry picking” by comparing the year with the highest number of prosecutions under President George W. Bush, which was 11,015 in 2004, to the 7,774 under Mr. Obama in 2012.
To make his point, the senator can take the highest number in the Bush administration. But there is no debating that if Mr. Cruz selected any year from 2002 to 2008, it would have shown more prosecutions than 2012.
“The point of this data is that more can be done to target violent criminals, and this administration has not made that a priority,” Mr. Cruz’s spokesman, Catherine Frazier, told me Friday. “The senator believes that our focus must be on prosecuting those who commit gun crimes, not taking away the Second Amendment rights of those who follow the laws.”
Second, Politifact found fault in the source of the correct data. Mr. Cruz cited the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse from Syracuse University, which tracks crimes in which the lead charge is firearms-related.
However, Politifact didn’t like these numbers, so instead used the Justice Department figures in which gun charges were included in all the charges. By looking at all charges, it benefits Mr. Obama because the 2004 number (12,962) was the lowest in Mr. Bush’s presidency. But still, that number is higher than the 11,728 prosecutions in 2012.
Via: Washington Times
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