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Photo by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images
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The 411 on Second Amendment Sanctuaries
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat and outspoken gun-control advocate, recently said in a CNN interview that “60% of counties in this country are refusing to implement the nation’s gun laws.”
That caught our attention. It seemed highly suspect.
Staff Writer D’Angelo Gore contacted the senator’s office and reviewed the materials that it sent to him. D’Angelo also interviewed some law experts.
It turns out that the figure is suspect.
The senator was referring to counties in the United States that consider themselves to be so-called “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” which means that those counties – or the state of which they are a part — oppose gun laws they deem unconstitutional. By some counts, about 2,000 of the more than 3,100 counties in the U.S. are “Second Amendment sanctuaries.”
But, as D’Angelo writes, that does not necessarily mean that all of those counties are refusing to enforce gun laws. He found some examples of sanctuary counties that still enforce gun laws, including a Colorado county that Murphy mentioned in the interview. D’Angelo also found that many of the declarations by states and counties are largely symbolic – meant to merely proclaim support for the protection of gun rights.
To learn more about “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” read D’Angelo’s article “Exploring Sen. Murphy’s Claim About ‘Second Amendment Sanctuaries.’”
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In overturning a lower court decision that granted former President Donald Trump’s request for a special master to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, a circuit court said in its Dec. 1 ruling: “The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations.” Read more.
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Extreme risk protection orders, also known as red-flag orders, aim to keep weapons away from individuals who may be a threat to themselves or others. Colorado -- where a gunman killed five people and wounded many others at an LGBTQ nightclub on Nov. 19 -- is one of 19 states and the District of Columbia that have red-flag laws in place, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates gun control laws. Five states – not including Colorado – permit only law enforcement to petition a court for an order.
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Dr. Francis Collins, who was director of the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021, cited Kathleen Hall Jamieson's work on combatting COVID-19 misinformation in remarks this week at a Washington Post forum on trust in science.
Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and co-founder of FactCheck.org, advocates proactively incorporating public health knowledge into fact-checking articles to arm the public with information it needs to recognize and reject false information.
Collins said of COVID-19, "If we'd had a better sense of how social media could so completely confuse all of this, we'd have done better at surveying that, sort of seeing when misinformation was coming up in a particular way and not being caught back on our heels. We might have even had an opportunity to do what you call 'pre‑bunking,' where you identify the most predictable, malicious lies and you get people ready for them, so that when you see somebody says there's a chip in the syringe that Bill Gates put there, even before that's gotten to be there, think about what that's about. We could have done that.
"People who are experts in this ‑‑ I talked a lot to Kathleen Hall Jamieson at [the University of] Pennsylvania about science communication. She would say every single one of the most significant disinformation campaigns about COVID were predictable and could have therefore been pre‑bunked if we'd had a plan to do that."
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Reader: Do solar panels work on cloudy days?
FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: Yes, but not as efficiently, and how much depends on the type of clouds.
In a post on how clouds affect solar energy production, NOAA says:
When sunlight hits low clouds, a lot of that light – and heat – is reflected back into space. When sunlight hits clouds that are high in the atmosphere, those clouds reflect less sunlight energy. However, these high clouds also trap more heat.
So, if you live in a place that commonly has a lot of low clouds, solar panels might not be able to produce as much energy as they would somewhere else.
However, certain cloudy conditions can be great for the production of solar energy. One example happens when ice crystals inside of high-altitude clouds cause the sunlight to appear brighter than usual. This phenomenon is called “cloud lensing” because the high clouds act as a lens, focusing the light in a certain region.
In a FAQ on solar energy, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission says, "On a cloudy day, typical solar panels can produce 10-25% of their rated capacity."
Solar panels even work in snow, if the snow is light enough, Dr. Charlie Gay, the former director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office, explained in a 2017 post on the office’s website.
Heavy snow accumulation can prevent energy production, however. “Once the snow starts to slide, though, even if it only slightly exposes the panel, power generation is able to occur again,” Gay said.
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Wrapping Up
Here's what else we've got for you this week:
- "Country Singer’s Death Not Related to COVID-19 Vaccine": Country singer Jake Flint died unexpectedly on Nov. 27, just hours after his wedding. Social media posts baselessly insinuate Flint died because of the COVID-19 vaccine. His publicist said Flint’s death was “not related in any way” to the vaccine.
Y lo que publicamos en español (English versions are accessible in each story):
- "‘Died Suddenly’ impulsa falsa teoría de despoblación":
Lo que parecen ser coágulos sanguíneos post mortem ordinarios se presentan en un video viral en internet como supuesta prueba de que existe un complot de despoblación que utiliza la vacuna contra el COVID-19 para matar a la gente. No hay pruebas que respalden esta teoría. El video, de una hora de duración, repite numerosas falsedades que ya han sido desmentidas.
- "La FDA no ha cambiado su postura sobre el uso de la ivermectina, contrario a afirmaciones en internet": En respuesta a una demanda civil, los abogados de la Administración de Alimentos y Medicamentos describieron las advertencias de la agencia sobre el uso no aprobado de la ivermectina para tratar el COVID-19 como “recomendaciones”. Aunque esta definición no aporta información nueva, algunos medios conservadores han afirmado falsamente que se trata de una revelación “escandalosa” y un cambio en la posición de la FDA.
- "La muerte de un cantante de country no tuvo relación con la vacuna contra el COVID-19": El cantante de música country Jake Flint murió inesperadamente el 27 de noviembre, pocas horas después de su boda. En las redes sociales se insinúa sin fundamento que Flint murió a causa de la vacuna contra el COVID-19. El cantante de 37 años de edad recibió su segunda dosis más de un año antes de su muerte y su representante dijo que la muerte de Flint “no estuvo relacionada de modo alguno” con la vacuna.
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