Senate Republicans’ ad falsely claims Democrats voted to disarm disabled veterans

The National Republican Senatorial Committee released three ads on Tuesday accusing Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown (OH), Joe Manchin (WV), and Jon Tester (MT) of taking away the right of wounded veterans to own firearms. They did not.

The NRSC is the official campaign arm of the Senate Republican caucus, working to elect and reelect GOP senators across the country. It has targeted Brown, Manchin, and Tester, who represent states former President Donald Trump won in both 2016 and 2020.

The 30-second spots cite a June 22 vote in which Senate Democrats defeated a Republican attempt to roll back a gun safety rule. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives regulation in question, finalized on Jan. 31, clarified that if gun owners attach a stabilizing brace to their weapons, those guns should be treated as rifles under existing law. By using a brace to transform a firearm into a rifle, individuals had previously been able to circumvent registration and taxation requirements for rifles. Shooters used stabilizing braces in several recent mass shootings, including at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.

In the West Virginia ad, a narrator says: 

They sacrificed protecting our freedoms, but Democrat Joe Manchin turned his back on West Virginia’s veterans. Manchin may talk like a Republican … but he votes like a liberal, joining Washington extremists to deny wounded veterans their Second Amendment rights, limiting constitutional freedoms, pushing more government control, selling out West Virginia veterans. Tell Joe Manchin: Stand with our wounded warriors. Hands off our Second Amendment rights.

The ad shows images of President Joe Biden and New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In fine print, the claims are sourced to Senate roll call vote 171, the vote on the stabilizing brace rule. 

The script for the Ohio ad against Brown is virtually identical. The Montana ad claims that Tester has been changed by Washington and then makes the same allegations of selling out veterans and taking away Second Amendment rights from wounded veterans.

But contrary to the ads’ claims, the regulation on stabilizing braces does nothing to take away Second Amendment rights from anyone. 

The ATF specifically noted when issuing the regulation: “This rule does not affect ‘stabilizing braces’ that are objectively designed and intended as a ‘stabilizing brace’ for use by individuals with disabilities, and not for shouldering the weapon as a rifle. Such stabilizing braces are designed to conform to the arm and not as a buttstock.”

Under the National Firearms Act, passed by Congress nearly 90 years ago, rifles must be registered with the federal government and are subject to a $200 transfer tax when purchased or sold. The regulation on the use of braces does not alter the right to own such weapons itself. 

The regulation has received praise from gun violence prevention groups. “We applaud the Biden-Harris Administration for properly classifying highly lethal weapons according to the law, which is the very definition of a common-sense gun regulation,” Everytown for Gun Safety president John Feinblatt said in a January press statement.

The National Rifle Association opposes the regulation and has sued to block what it calls “onerous registration and taxation requirements.” 

The NRSC has received annual contributions of $15,000, the legal maximum, from the NRA Political Victory Fund every year since 2002.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.