Cory Booker Receives Three Pinocchios for Claiming Toy Guns are More Regulated than Firearms

Sen. Cory Booker (D – N.J.) claims that the United States has “more federal regulation over toy guns than real ones” and even the liberal Washington Post isn’t buying it.

The Washington Post, no friend of Second Amendment advocates, fact-checked Booker’s statement and rated it three Pinocchios for its lack of truthfulness.

Booker’s wildly inaccurate statement follows his 14 point policy proposal to combat gun violence, of which the New York Times called one of “the most progressive gun-control measures suggested by a candidate seeking the Democratic nomination for president.”

A Medium post, created by Booker’s campaign details his gun-control proposals:

There is more regulation over toy guns than real ones. While medicine, children’s toys, and any number of other consumer products are subject to regulation by the federal government, firearms are exempt. In other words, gun manufacturers have little incentive to make their products safer. Cory will work to close this loophole in federal oversight and allow the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ensure gun safety by making safety warnings and issuing recalls for faulty firearms.

Booker repeated the claim when he tweeted, “So we have different regulations for toy guns and no regulations for the weapons on our streets that are killing so many people.”

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler called Booker’s claim “specious.” He added there are “clearly many laws and regulations governing the sale, distribution, and use of guns.”

That includes a Federal ban on specific types of firearms and the 2018 ATF ban on bump stocks.

Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told the Washington Post, “Our industry is the most heavily regulated industry in the country.” He pointed out that no industry is regulated at the local, state, and federal level to the extent imposed on gun producers and suppliers.

Kessler agrees writing, “Firearms, at just about every level, are highly regulated in the United States. Booker is calling for another level of regulation, but he can’t suggest toy guns are even more highly regulated.”

Booker is of the now 23 Democrats vying for their party’s nomination to face President Trump in 2020. Since he announced, Booker’s campaign has floundered and he has struggled to gain donations and air time.

Some question if Booker’s newfound strident stand against gun ownership may be part of an effort to break out from the crowd of other 2020 Democrat hopefuls. His recent proposal is an extreme position that opposes the Constitution and our fundamental freedoms to bear arms as protected the Second Amendment.

As a part of his Medium post, Booker claims that gun manufacturers have “little incentive to make their products safer” and promised to “work to close this loophole in federal oversight.”

Booker doesn’t stop there though. He goes on to claim, “While medicine, children’s toys, and any number of other consumer products are subject to regulation by the federal government, firearms are exempt.”

Those statements are so blatantly false that even the anti-gun The Washington Post and The New York Times refuse to approve of them.

Kessler’s ‘fact-check’ article labeled Booker’s tweet as “rather standard fare” for the anti-gun crowd. The Post article pointed that the reason the Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn’t regulate firearms is because it is explicitly prohibited from doing so by law.

Six years ago, Kessler reported in another ‘fact-check’, there are at least 300 statutes on the federal level governing firearms.

We have pointed out frequently, the progressive leftist bias of The Washington Post. Glenn Kessler should be applauded for breaking that trend. He not only refuted Booker’s claim about gun regulations but took the time in his article to explain to readers how little federal regulation of toy guns exists.

As far as he could determine, the only regulation on the “sale, distribution and ownership of toy guns” is the requirement those toys have a bright orange tip on the muzzle to “differentiate them from actual firearms.”

The bottom line for Booker is one of the most influential newspapers among American liberals, writing about one of their favorite issues, declared him to be a liar.

As one conservative commentator said, “That’s one way of differentiating himself from the pack of Democratic hopefuls, but it might not have been what the senator was shooting for.”

Like Joe Biden, Cory Booker has shown a habit of shooting himself in the foot (pun intended). May the mainstream media continue to have a few who are willing to point it out.