Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio is considered a possible 2016 presidential candidate. In a recent speech at the National Rifle Association, the Republican touched on some core conservative values, like the Second Amendment.
In the speech, Rubio described the right to own a gun as part of the so-called American Dream and criticized the media for stigmatizing gun owners. He also described the Constitution of the United States as unique, claiming:
"No other country has a constitutional right" like the Second Amendment.
Our partners at PolitiFact looked into the claim. PolitiFact reporter Julie Kliegman said this claim rates MOSTLY TRUE. Kliegman said the team looked at constitutions from countries across the globe to compare.
"We were only able to find a few that mentioned the right to bear arms. Those were Mexico, Haiti and Guatemala," Kliegman said.
The Comparitive Constitutions Project has studied gun rights in national constitutions dating back to 1789. The group found that Iran's constitution also mentions guns, but experts say it's too ambiguous to consider it a true right to bear arms.
In fact, the project says only a minority of constitutions have ever included gun rights, and the number has gone down. The co-director of the project also said that the language in each constitution is different and no other country has the "well-regulated militia" language. Plus, Kliegman said enforcement is also key.
"Experts told us that Mexico and Haiti kind of ignore that part of their constitution," Kliegman said.
Because of that, Rubio's claim about the Second Amendment gets a MOSTLY TRUE rating from PolitiFact.
SOURCES: THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS
- PolitiFact ruling
- Sen. Marco Rubio, NRA speech, April 25, 2014
- Wayne LaPierre, NRA speech, April 25, 2014
- Comparative Constitutions Project and Guatemala and Mexico, Accessed April 28, 2014
- GunPolicy.org, Compare U.S. and Guatemala, Accessed April 28, 2014
- BloombergView by Zachary Elkins & Tom Ginsburg & James Melton, "U.S. Gun rights are truly American exceptionalism," March 7, 2013
- New York Times Op-Ed by Zachary Elkins, "Re-write the Second Amendment," April 4, 2013
- Slate, "Have gun, want to travel," Dec. 14, 2010
- Miami Herald Naked Politics blog, "....now about Marco Rubio’s NRA gun-rights rating, national press," April 25, 2014
- Washington Post, "In Mexico, only one gun store but no dearth of violence," Dec. 29, 2010
- PolitiFact, Wayne LaPierre file, Accessed April 28, 2014
- PolitiFact, "Facebook post says the gun-rich Swiss have the lowest firearm rate in the civilized world," Jan. 6, 2013
- Interview, Alex Conant, spokesman U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, April 28, 2014
- Interview, Zachary Elkins, co-director of the Comparative Constitutions Project and government professor at University of Texas, April 28, 2014
- Interview, Tom Ginsburg, co-director of the Comparative Constitutions Project and international law professor at University of Chicago, April 28, 2014
- Interview, Gary Mauser, Professor Emeritus Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, April 28, 2014
- Interview, Robert J. Cottrol, law professor George Washington University, April 28, 2014
- Interview, David Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute and adjunct professor of Advanced Constitutional Law at Denver University who writes for the NRA, April 28, 2014