False claims being shared on social media trace back to a longstanding Illinois prohibition on individuals carrying a firearm while wearing a face covering to conceal their identity.

A popular meme of Kevin Hart and Keanu Reeves is spreading misinformation about face mask requirements and concealed-weapon permits.

Rapper King Chip shared the meme in a July 2 Facebook post. It shows a fictional exchange between Hart and Reeves. “STOP! You have to wear a mask in here,” the comedian says in the meme. “I can’t, it’s a class 4 felony violating section 24-1(a)(9) prohibiting a mask while carrying a gun,” the actor responds.

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Similar posts have been shared tens of thousands of times, according to CrowdTangle, an audience metrics tool.

We’ve previously fact-checked inaccurate claims about face mask rules and concealed-weapon laws, so we wanted to investigate this Facebook post.

There is no federal law that bans carrying a concealed weapon while wearing a mask. The Facebook post comes from a blog post about an Illinois statute that prohibits carrying a firearm while wearing a face covering. But the Illinois State Police said that law does not apply to lawful concealed-weapon permit holders who abide by the state’s COVID-19 mask requirements.

The claim stems from an April 25 article on a website called Illinois Leaks.

Illinois Leaks is run by the Edgar County Watchdogs, a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization that aims to expose government corruption and waste. The article focuses on Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker’s April 30 executive order, which required the public to wear face coverings in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The order went into effect May 1.

Illinois Leaks wrote that the order either “strips a gun owner of his rights while complying with the executive order to wear a mask, or makes them a criminal if they exercise their gun rights while complying with the executive order to wear a mask.” It does neither of those things.

The source of the Illinois Leaks article is a state statute that says it’s illegal for someone to carry a gun when “hooded, robed or masked in such manner as to conceal his or her identity.” Violating that law is punishable by a class four felony, which comes with a maximum prison sentence of three years, or six years for an extended term.

On its face, the article seems to have a point about the letter of the law and Pritzker’s executive order. But the spirit of those rules paints a different picture.

A statement published in late April by the Illinois State Police says the executive order “was not intended to negatively impact permit holders under the Illinois Concealed Carry Act while legally carrying firearms.”

“The executive order does not require or suggest that law enforcement should arrest or criminally charge conceal carry license permit holders for wearing protective masks while in public as long as they are complying with the other provisions of the Illinois Concealed Carry Act and are not committing any other violations of Illinois law,” the state police said.

The Illinois attorney general’s office told us that it would be up to the discretion of local prosecutors whether to bring charges against someone for violating the statute. The state police said in its statement that it expects police officers “will use appropriate judgment” and state’s attorneys “will likewise exercise sound prosecutorial discretion.”

According to some tallies, about 15 states, as well as cities and counties, have anti-mask laws on the books that pre-date the coronavirus pandemic. Some states, especially those in the South, enacted those laws around the turn of the century to combat the Ku Klux Klan, whose members don white hoods.

One of those laws is in North Carolina. It prohibits people from covering their faces in public, but that law is currently suspended and does not mention firearms at all. We couldn’t find any other state where wearing a protective mask while carrying a concealed weapon is currently banned.

Our ruling

A Facebook post says wearing a face mask while carrying a firearm in public is a class four felony.

There is no federal law that bans carrying a concealed weapon while wearing a mask. There is a law against being “hooded, robed or masked” while carrying a gun in Illinois, but the Illinois State Police said the state’s COVID-19 mask requirements do not require law enforcement to arrest lawful concealed-weapon permit holders.

We rate it False.

In the wake of a government-ordered shutdown of bars, restaurants and other businesses over concerns of spreading COVID-19, residents are likely experiencing delays buying guns as stores wait for state police to process background checks.

Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois Executive Director Todd Vandermyde said gun store owners tell him there’s a run on guns and ammunition. But he said he’s also hearing of delays in customers taking ownership of their purchased firearms because of a backlog at Illinois State Police processing firearm transfer requests.

“You’ve got dealers who won’t release the firearm without the completion of a background check with an approval and so people are now waiting four, five, six, seven days, even,” Vandermyde said.

With all the news of the spread of the novel coronavirus and the orders to restrict gatherings of 50 or more, or even ten or more people, and some municipalities eyeing emergency powers to temporarily prohibit weapons and ammunition sales among other things, Vandermyde said waiting longer than 72 hours to get a gun adds to mounting anxieties.

“When you are now hearing of cities like Oak Park and others talking about lockdowns, that is putting people on edge,” Vandermyde said.

Illinois State Police acknowledge they’ve received around 19,000 inquiries in just five days and are working to timely process them.

“Regarding the Firearm Transfer Inquiry Program (FTIP), the Firearms Services Bureau (FSB) has experienced a high volume of submissions since Friday, March 13, 2020,” a statement from ISP said. “Through March 18, the FSB has received 18,980 inquiries. FSB is working to process these requests as efficiently as possible to ensure a timely response.”

Vandmyde said that’s not enough. “This is where background checks turn into bans and waiting periods turn into leaving people defenseless,” he said.

Some reports say the national background check system recently experienced a 300 percent increase in filings. Background checks aren’t required for ammunition purchases but in Illinois, purchasing ammunition still requires a Firearm Owner Identification card.

The Illinois State Rifle Association said they don’t expect this problem to level out until May. And with thousands of new firearm owners, they suggest firearms instructors set up reasonably priced 2 or 3 hour safety classes.

Some stores are putting purchase limits in place and are suspending their services to help residents get Firearm Owner Identification cards and Concealed Carry permits filed.

“Due to increased sales throughout the firearm industry, there are restrictions on firearm and ammo purchases until further notice,” GAT Guns of East Dundee said in an email to customers. “Ammo Sales are limited to 1 box of target and 1 box of defensive/expanding ammo per caliber per household per day. Firearm Purchases will stop 3 hours before store close until further notice. Gun pickups, range use, and non-firearm purchases will continue as normal after that time.”

The retailer also said “in an attempt to minimize our customers’ and staff’s exposure to COVID-19 Virus, we have made the decision to postpone the majority of our training programs and classes,” and that “FOID and Concealed Carry applications, as well as fingerprints, are not being processed at this time.”

State police have had a backlog of processing FOID applications that some gun stores help facilitate. Those backlogs number in the tens of thousands and have taken months longer than the law allows.

Vandermyde said the background check delay for firearms purchases is just another problem in a slew of issues that ISP has had even before the pandemic shocked the economy.

“They haven’t been able to process FOID cards,” Vandermyde said. “They haven’t been able to process the dealer licensing [through the Illinois Firearms Dealer License Certification Act] and now they can’t process background checks. I think that’s a problem.”

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Supreme Court is blocking an assault weapons ban from going to voters in 2022, saying in a Thursday ruling that the ballot summary is deceptive because it doesn’t clearly state that a grandfathering clause applies to the owner, not the gun itself.

A group called Ban Assault Weapons Now sponsored the proposed constitutional amendment, inspired by the mass shooting at a Parkland high school that left 17 people dead. It would have banned the possession of any semiautomatic rifle or shotgun capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition.

The amendment language would have made an exception for anyone who already lawfully owned an assault weapon as long as they registered it with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

But the court in a 4-1 opinion said the ballot summary was misleading because it said weapons lawfully possessed before the initiative was passed would be exempted.

The court ruled that voters would be deceived because the initiative wouldn’t have protected the weapon itself, but rather the person who lawfully owned it. In other words, people who legally owned a weapon wouldn’t be able to sell it or give it to someone else.

“While the ballot summary purports to exempt registered assault weapons lawfully possessed prior to the Initiative’s effective date, the Initiative does not categorically exempt the assault weapon, only the current owner’s possession of that assault weapon. The ballot summary is therefore affirmatively misleading,” the court wrote in its opinion.

Justice Jorge Labarga disagreed with the majority, and said the 75-word limit on the ballot summary can’t provide every detail of the entire initiative. But he said the language was clear.

“The ballot title and summary provide fair notice and equip voters to educate themselves about the details of the Initiative,” Labarga wrote. “Consequently, the Initiative should be placed on the ballot.”

If the language was approved and group had gathered enough petitions to place it on the ballot, it would have needed 60% voter approval to pass,

The ruling prompted a strong reaction from Ban Assault Weapons now. The group is chaired by Gail Schwartz, whose 14-year-old nephew Alex Schachter was killed during the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Valentine’s Day 2018.

“The Supreme Court, now controlled by the NRA in the same way as our Governor and our Legislature, has fundamentally failed the people of Florida,” Schwartz said in a news release. “Not only has the Legislature recently made it harder to pass ballot initiatives, now the people must also face a Court of rightwing ideologues who will only approve initiatives they agree with politically.”

The state had certified about 175,000 of the more than 766,000 voter signatures needed to place the proposal on the ballot. But since the petitions used the language the court says is invalid, the group can’t simply tweak the ballot summary. It would have to start over.

Attorney General Ashley Moody opposed the ballot initiative, as did the National Rifle Association, which hired a legal team to fight it.

“We are pleased with the Court’s ruling. It is extraordinarily important that when a voter steps into the voting booth, they know what they are voting on,” said Moody spokeswoman Lauren Cassedy.

The group that launched the initiative raised about $2 million in the effort to get it on the 2022 ballot, including more than 300 donations from Parkland residents. The group Americans for Gun Safety Now contributed at least $260,000 to the effort, but a spokeswoman said it had no comment because it wasn’t involved in the legal proceedings.

Americans have responded to the coronavirus epidemic with a record-breaking number of gun purchases, according to new government data on the number of background checks conducted in March.

More than 3.7m total firearm background checks were conducted through the FBI’s background check system in March, the highest number on record in more than 20 years. An estimated 2.4m of those background checks were conducted for gun sales, according to adjusted statistics from a leading firearms industry trade group. That’s an 80% increase compared with the same month last year, the trade group said.

New York governor says US won’t ‘get back to normal’ after coronavirus

Nearly 1.2m total gun background checks were conducted in a single week, starting 16 March, breaking all previous records going back to 1998, according to FBI data.

While the number of background checks doesn’t correlate one-to-one in terms of guns sold, the number of firearm background checks conducted through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System is the best available proxy for gun sales in the United States. The figures highlight how the pandemic has created a surge in demand for gun ownership, with some gun stores finding themselves inundated with panic-buyers, including, at least anecdotally, many Americans purchasing a gun for the first time.

The record-breaking week of 16 March was when California residents were photographed lining up by the dozens outside local gun stores, as the Bay Area and then California as a whole announced the first emergency stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the United States.

Friday 20 March broke records for the highest number of firearms background checks conducted nationwide in a single day: 210,308.

Americans can buy multiple guns from a licensed gun dealer with a single background check, meaning that the number of checks conducted does not reflect the total number of guns sold.

In most states, private citizens can also sell guns to each other without a background check, and these private sales are not included in the FBI’s numbers. There is no way to track how many guns were bought and sold in private sales over the past month. Some states also allow residents who have a license to carry a concealed firearm in public to buy guns without a background check, another category of gun sales not included in the FBI’s statistics.

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Federal firearms background checks are also conducted for reasons other than gun sales, including for validating permits to allow people to carry a concealed firearm in public, and, in California, for ammunition sales.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade group for the American firearms industry, produces regular “adjusted” estimates for gun background checks that subtract out background checks that the FBI tags as related to concealed carry permit applications, or to period checks by officials to make sure permits are still valid. This produces a lower number that is a closer proxy for gun sales.

The trade group’s adjusted numbers for March are still “simply eye-popping”, Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the industry group, wrote in an email.

The second-highest week of total firearms background checks on record was 17 December 2012, the week after a mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, left 20 children dead, and sparked fears that the United States would pass sweeping national gun control measures.

More than 950,000 firearms background checks were conducted that week, though US lawmakers ultimately failed to pass any additional gun control legislation after resistance from gun rights activists and many Republican politicians.

While the FBI statistics do not include any information on what kind of purchasers are driving the spike in gun sales, some gun sellers have said they are seeing increased numbers of new gun owners.

“Retailers have been telling us that the overwhelming majority of those buying firearms over the last month have been first-time gun owners,” Oliva, the spokesman for the firearms industry trade group, wrote in an email.

American gun control advocates said they found the statistics on record-breaking numbers of firearms background checks concerning, and urged Americans to think twice before panic-buying a gun, particularly if they had never owned one before.

Concerns have also been raised about children sheltering at home in houses where they might have access to guns, as well as the risk of gun suicide, which amount to approximately two-thirds of US gun deaths each year.

“We need to prepare for the increased risk of more firearms in untrained hands,” David Chipman, a senior policy adviser at Giffords, a leading gun violence prevention expert, said in a statement. “If you didn’t think you needed a gun prior to March of this year, you certainly don’t need to rush out and get one now.”

Activists said that the number of guns sold in the past month could have been even higher, if some cities and states had not told gun retailers to close during stay-at-home orders, deeming them non-essential businesses. However, some of these orders have been changed under pressure from gun rights activists, particularly after the Trump administration included firearms manufacturers, retailers and shooting ranges as part of the national’s “essential critical infrastructure workforce”.

The US supreme court on Monday declined to take up a series of new cases seeking to expand gun rights.

The court rejected a total of 10 cases that had piled up in recent months.

Two justices, conservatives Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, said they would have heard one of the cases, a dispute from New Jersey over that state’s concealed carry gun permits.

In the New Jersey case, the justices left in place a lower court ruling that threw out a lawsuit challenging the state’s law mandating that people who want to carry handguns in public must show they have a special reason before they can get a permit.

Other cases the court declined to take up included challenges to assault weapon bans in Massachusetts and Cook county, Illinois, a jurisdiction that includes Chicago. The court also turned down cases similar to the New Jersey dispute from Massachusetts and Maryland.

The high court’s action comes on the heels of its 27 April decision to dismiss a National Rifle Association-backed challenge to now-repealed New York City restrictions on handgun owners transporting their firearms outside the home.

The move sidestepped a major ruling over the scope of the right to bear arms under the second amendment.

The New York case was the first gun rights dispute the court had heard in almost a decade, with gun control activists fearful the court will further expand the right to bear arms.

The decision by the justices not to take up any of the 10 other cases shows that the court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority, remains hesitant about wading into gun rights issues.