The NRA’s magazine acknowledged that President Obama “really hasn’t had the opportunity to” confiscate firearms, undercutting years of fearmongering about the supposed existence of a “massive Obama conspiracy” to dismantle the Second Amendment and take guns away.

The NRA’s admission that a president can’t confiscate guns because “Congress writes the laws, not the president” also demonstrates the implausibility of repeated recent claims from the NRA that link Hillary Clinton to gun confiscation.

The admission was included in a June 9 article for NRA magazine America’s 1st Freedom which took issue with how Obama “rudely” responded to a question from a gun store owner at a recent town hall event.

The article quoted Obama as telling the questioner, “I’m about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I’ve been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country. And at no point have I ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners. So it is just not true.”

Responding to Obama’s statement, the article acknowledged, “Now, [the gun store owner] could have interrupted the president to mention that Obama really hasn’t had the opportunity to do that. Congress writes the laws, not the president”:

Rhude didn’t sit down after asking his question. Rather, he stood silently as President Obama didn’t even try to answer his question, but instead went off on a defensive tirade: “First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true. And I don’t care how many times the NRA says it.”

Obama then said, “I’m about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I’ve been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country. And at no point have I ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners. So it is just not true.”

Now, Rhude could have interrupted the president to mention that Obama really hasn’t had the opportunity to do that. Congress writes the laws, not the president. He could then have listed the many attacks on the right to bear arms -- from Operation Fast and Furious to Operation Choke Point to Obama’s attempted ban on common ammunition for AR-15-type rifles to his using a “pen and phone” to push anti-gun executive actions. But Rhude respectfully stayed silent.

Claims about gun confiscation and Obama have been the NRA’s bread and butter for the past eight years. More recently, the NRA has suggested that the election of Clinton could lead to gun confiscation for law-abiding Americans.

According to FactCheck.org, neither Obama nor Clinton have advocated confiscating privately held firearms. Both have instead expressed support for regulating gun ownership, not banning it.

The NRA’s fearmongering about gun confiscation is even implausible under the unlikely hypothetical scenario where a president and Congress both acted to take guns from Americans; under current Supreme Court precedent, blanket gun bans are unconstitutional.