By Baldr Odinson.
Hey, did you hear it? The government’s out to get your guns! The mass shooting last month was “staged” by the government! The President is intentionally trying to kill Mexicans to justify an attack on the Second Amendment! The government is gearing up for civil war and martial law! The United Nations is about to invade us!
These are the ridiculous assertions that the pro-gun extremists want you to think (or, if they are schizophrenic, that’s what they think themselves). This isn’t the belief of mainstream, average gun owners, but rather the delusions of the fringe extremists and fearmongers. Unfortunately, as you’ll see below, some of them are in positions of power and influence.
There have been so many crazy conspiracy theories in the last half year that I had to start listing them.
Fear and paranoia are the stock and trade of the gun industry, at least in the self-defense market. You wouldn’t buy a gun for self-defense unless you had an unhealthy dose of fear to drive the purchase. Unless you make your livelihood in law enforcement, security, bail bondsman, or some other high-risk job, or are actively being stalked, then chances are that fear is better characterized as paranoia, since the average citizen isn’t likely to ever need a gun to protect themselves, and having a gun actually increases your chance of being killed.
If you doubt that last statement, consider the facts. A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to harm you than to protect you. And if you carry that gun on the street with you, you are 4.5 times more likely to be killed.
But the gun industry wants you afraid — very afraid. Not just of the bad guys, but even of our government. Be afraid of the stranger on the street, too, and in coffee houses, restaurants, and schools. You never know what they may be thinking, so you’d better carry a loaded gun with you at all times! Guilty until proven innocent.
Consider, for instance, the NRA’s “circus of fear” of statements they’ve made to keep you afraid. Fear sells guns. LOTS of guns. And that’s just fine with the gun manufacturers who “donate” tens of millions of dollars a year to the NRA in return for NRA lobbying on their behalf.
And, furthermore, these fringe fearmongers don’t want you to believe that gun owners are actually responsible for shootings. They would rather you believe that ALL gun owners are responsible citizens only interested in self-protection. Those shootings by previously law-abiding citizens? Never mind those! That’s just some sort of government set-up staged to give them reason to take away your gunzzz.
I submit, if the pro-gun side wants to find REAL conspiracies, they need only look to themselves.
Here are some pro-gun conspiracy theories that I’ve collected:
August, 2012: President Obama is going to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the United Nations, which is then going to invade small-town America and take away your guns, which will lead to civil war!
County Judge Tom Head, from Lubbock County, Texas, stated publically that he believed that, if President Obama is re-elected, he would hand over the sovereignty of the United States of America to the United Nations, and all hell would break loose, including invasion by the United Nations, removal of gun rights, and all-out civil war! He said, in a media interview:
“He is going to do what he wants to do. Now what do you think he is going to try to do in this next term? One of the things, my opinion. One of the things is he’s going to try to give the sovereignty of the United States away to the United Nations. What do you think the public is going to do when that happens? We are talking civil unrest, civil disobedience, possibly, possibly civil war, OK? Now what happens? What happens? Now I’m not talking just talking riots here and there. I’m talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms, get rid of the dictator. OK, what do you think he is going to do when that happens? He is going to call in the UN troops, personnel carriers, tanks and weapons.”
Not unrelated, Judge Head is the local emergency response coordinator. This, apparently, is the emergency response he is preparing for.
Local Democrats called for Judge Head to resign in embarrassment. Head’s response:
“I cannot divorce my theology and my philosophy from my office,” Head told the newspaper. “I am pro-life, I’m pro-gun rights, and if you’re gonna vote for me and if you’re not for gun rights, then you probably don’t want me in office.”
August, 2012: The Government is buying up enough ammunition to declare martial law and take away your gun rights!
This is a conspiracy theory that was recently discussed at the “El Cafe” here at The Daily Journalist.
A couple of government agencies (the Social Security Administration and Homeland Security) made large but routine purchases of hollow-point ammunition. Onepro-conspiracy theory website and radio show decided that this was evidence of a massive government preparation for coming civil unrest due to economic meltdown. “It’s not outlandish to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest,” they wrote. I disagree; it is very outlandish.
In response, another extremist website took it one step further, writing that preparations were underway by the government to declare martial law and take away everyone’s gun rights! From the article:
A few observers, however, see a much more ominous motivation behind the mass purchase of ammo. Some believe that the federal government is preparing for Martial law during which citizens would be deprived of the freedom to their firearms and during which curfews would be imposed nationwide.
But what would precipitate the implementation of such a broad based effort at preparation on the part of multiple agencies of the federal government at the present time?
Several factors are possibly at play. Citizens as never before have been purchasing firearms and ammunition at an unprecedented level since 2008. Many believe that unelected forces that are not under the control of citizens are wielding undue influence over the federal government, even to the point of breaking the law and violating the time honored principles of the U.S. Constitution. And some believe that at some point, inevitably citizens who are dedicated to preserving liberty as encapsulated in the Constitution will rise up to depose the shadowy figures lurking in the background, and their puppets within the government, who have determined to impose on the United States a way of thinking and form of government that are foreign to every known principle espoused by the Founding Fathers.
Thankfully, the fact-checking site, Snopes.com, put this nonsense to rest. While confirming that a government order had been placed, the hype about preparing for civil unrest was false. The order, along with an order for paper targets, is for law enforcement training and qualifications.
Additionally, a fellow contributor at The Daily Journalist, Sylvia Longmire, who was a Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, said that the same hollow point ammunition was regularly used by her department for target practice and qualifications.
July, 2012: The Aurora, Colorado mass shooting was actually staged by the government as an excuse for more gun control!
When a mentally ill young man, James Holmes, opened fire on a crowded movie theater in Aurora, killing 12 and wounding 58, he did so with an arsenal of weapons and body armor which he purchased legally on the internet, and then booby trapped his apartment. Such mass shootings happen all too frequently in the United States. But, as I said above, pro-gun extremists don’t like to believe that “law-abiding” citizens are capable of such atrocities, or that lax gun regulation that allows such weapons into dangerous hands could be partially to blame. Instead, they would rather blame the government. Such is the case when an extremist “news” site declared that the Aurora shooter was “enlisted” by the government to carry out the act. From the site:
I wouldn’t be surprised to discover someone in Washington was behind it all. After all, there’s no quicker way to disarm a nation and take total control over the population than to stage violence, blame it on firearms, then call for leaders to “do something!” Such calls inevitably end up resulting in gun confiscation, and it’s never too long after that before government genocide really kicks in like we saw with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and other tyrants.
He then tried to tie this conspiracy theory to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty conspiracy theory, because of its timing (see below). He also, incredibly, tried to confuse the issue by denying that the weapons and body armor would be easily available or that a college student would be able to purchase them, despite the fact that they are.
This ridiculous conspiracy about the Aurora shooting, with no evidence whatsoever, was then repeated and propagated by the president of the Gun Owners of America, Larry Pratt, who also tried to tie the shooting to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty conspiracy theory.
The closest thing the conspiracy theorists have to “evidence” is what they perceive as slight differences in facial features in before and after pictures of the shooter, implying that the person who was arrested couldn’t possibly be the actual James Holmes but rather an “impostor.”
July, 2012: The U.N. Small Arms Treaty will remove your gun rights and create a U.N. global gun control bureaucracy!
The United Nations Small Arms Treaty is intended to control the illicit international trade of guns to keep them out of the hands of human rights abusers. It would have no affect on domestic arms laws in the United States. The only people who would be affected by this oversight would be the abusers and the gun industry who sells to them and their middlemen. Naturally, representing the gun manufacturers, the NRA came out against it and engaged in a campaign of fearmongering. Said Chris Cox, a top lobbyist for the NRA:
But according to Cox’s theory “the world’s socialist, tyrannical and dictatorial regimes” will use the treaty to “implement international gun registration requirements, bans on commonly owned firearms, tracking and registration of ammunition purchases, and create a new U.N. gun control bureaucracy” thus fulfilling “President Barack Obama’s vision for America.”
Of course, this conspiracy has no grounding in reality. From the article (italics added):
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also said that treaty is “opportunity to promote the same high standards for the entire international community that the United States and other responsible arms exporters already have in place to ensure that weaponry is transferred for legitimate purposes.”
A senior policy advisor to the humanitarian organization Oxfam America has also pushed back against claims that the treaty has the nefarious purpose of interfering with domestic law:
“No government is discussing a treaty that would ever impact the right to bear arms, nor require regulation of domestic sales of arms,” said Scott Stedjan, a senior policy adviser at the relief group Oxfam America. “This is totally about international transfer of arms so that they don’t go to human rights abusers.”
But pro-gun extremists don’t pay attention to facts. Instead, they ran with the distortions from the NRA. From one extremist blog, which took Cox’s assertions and stretched them even further:
It is expected that the Washington Gun-Grabbers will package the treaty as legislation to assist in the fight against “terrorism,” “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates.” But the truth is this: The U.N.’s Small Arms Treaty is nothing more than a massive, GLOBAL gun control scheme.
American organizations supporting the Second Amendment have warned that the U.N.’s Small Arms Treaty would almost certainly FORCE national governments to:make gun licensing requirements far tougher than they are now, which would force law-abiding citizens to have to trudge through even more bureaucratic red tape just to legally own a gun;
It would also give the U.N. the power to CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL “unauthorized” civilian firearms. Of course, all firearms owned by the government will be excluded.
The treaty would BAN the trade, sale, and private ownership of ALL semi-automatic weapons.
There will be an INTERNATIONAL gun registry created. Once they know who has the guns — and where the guns are — we can expect full-scale gun CONFISCATION.
Conservative politicians, such as Rand Paul, have propagated this conspiracy theory for political gain.
June, 2012: “Operation Fast and Furious” wasn’t just a failed attempt to track guns to Mexican drug lords, but rather an attempt to create gun violence in Mexico as a means of justifying tougher gun laws in the U.S. and attack the Second Amendment!
Between 2006 and 2011 the ATF’s Project Gunrunner attempted to track straw purchases and illegal gun trafficking to Mexican drug cartels. Since a database of gun sales isn’t allowed in America, and loose gun regulation, particularly in the state of Arizona, makes it almost impossible to prevent large gun sales and trafficking, the ATF had to work with a patchwork of local regulations to monitor and track gun sales to illegal parties. Around 2000 guns were sold and attempted to be monitored as part of the program, but only a few small-time illegal gun sellers were actually arrested. As a result of internal disputes, many guns went untracked, though the ATF never intended for those guns to “walk” out of their control, as discovered by a six-month investigation by Fortune magazine. One federal agent, Brian Terry, was killed with one of those guns, as well as an unknown number of Mexican citizens. Only around 700 of those guns have since been recovered.
The project was clearly a failure, with tragic consequences, but the NRA came up with a more extreme conspiracy theory. According to them, Operation Fast and Furious, led by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, intentionally allowed thousands of guns to go into Mexico, hoping that the deaths of innocents would give more reason to pass stricter gun laws here in the United States and attack the Second Amendment. This, despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that President Obama had any knowledge of the workings of the program, or any evidence that Holder was in control of the program, and despite the findings of Katherine Eban for a Fortune Magazine investigation that no guns were intentionally allowed to “walk” by the ATF.
Nonetheless, FOX News was quick to pick up the conspiracy and advertise it as news as well as GOP pundits like Rush Limbaugh, and certain conservative GOP politicians, such as Rep. Darrell Issa, Republican chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“The whole point, don’t forget, the whole point of Fast and Furious was to create mayhem in Mexico among drug cartels with American-made weapons easily procured so that you and I would stand up in outrage and demand tighter gun laws. It was deceitful. It was sneaky. It was going against the will of the American people. It was liberalism on parade. It’s who these people are. They want tighter gun laws. Folks, I want to make this as simple as I can. They created crimes. There’s no other way to characterize this. They created, they manufactured crime. They enabled crimes. They saw to it that American guns ended up in Mexican drug cartel hands. And, of course, those people get the guns, they use them. When, in fact, it probably was difficult for the drug cartels to get the guns. It probably was not easy for the drug cartels to get the guns. Certainly not walking into gun stores in Phoenix and elsewhere, then crossing the border.
“So they set that up. They created crimes. It would be no different than if they wanted to ban airplanes, to engineer a bunch of crashes. I’m trying to think of a smart analogy to give you. If this bunch wanted all airplanes grounded, sabotage a bunch so they crash, and the people of the country demand that all airplanes be grounded. They wanted these guns that were used in these crimes to come from America.”
After the Fortune magazine investigation by Katherine Eban, one blog post by the People for the American Way summarized it thusly:
Eban’s reporting unearthed absolutely no evidence that the tactic of “gun walking”, which Rep. Issa and his allies continue to put front and center, was ever actually in play. “The ATF’s accusers seem untroubled by evidence that the policy they have pilloried didn’t actually exist”.
Predicated upon erroneous and misleading information, the Fast and Furious ‘scandal’ is heavy on political intrigue, yet light on substance.
May, 2012: The murder/suicide of four people at the hands of militiaman J.T. Ready was actually staged!
J.T. Ready was a “citizen’s militia” leader, self-appointed patroller of the border with Mexico, dabbler in politics (as a Tea Party speaker and candidate for Sheriff), and an ardent neo-Nazi. He made waves with his staunch, hardline aggressive stance against illegal aliens and his extreme pro-gun, vigilante opinions. Then, one evening, he strapped on body armor, armed himself with two handguns and a shotgun, then walked into a home in Gilbert, Arizona and shot four people to death, including a baby. He then killed himself.
Unhappy with the thought that one of their fiercest supporters could have carried out such a heinous act, the pro-gun extremists quickly jumped to the conclusion, with no evidence whatsoever, that Ready hadn’t actually committed the act. Rather, they speculated, it must have been carried out by some other organization that opposed his views. One conspiracy-theory website accused the Mexican mafia, opponents of “immigration reform and the 2nd Amendment”, or even the U.S. government. From the website:
This political position – particularly from someone running for Sheriff in America’s most embattled county, made him a target of the federal government.
If there was motive to kill J.T. Ready, perhaps it was his role in intercepting drugs from the powerful Sinaloa Drug Cartel. Perhaps it was his open distaste for the Federal Government and Arizona’s open borders. Or maybe it was his ambition to become Sheriff – in a border county which is currently the number one theater for drug smuggling and border crime in the United States of America.
These baseless speculations were then echoed on neo-Nazi and pro-gun forums, such as THIS ONE.
September, 2011: President Obama hasn’t passed any laws to restrict gun owners, which is evidence that he wants to destroy the Second Amendment!
President Obama has done nothing to restrict gun ownership, and has only strengthened gun rights by allowing them in national parks and on Amtrak trains. But if you believe the NRA’s executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, President Obama’s support of gun rights is only evidence that he actually wants to remove your gun rights. From LaPierre’s speech at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida:
“They’ll say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone … In public, the president will remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the old Clinton ban, that he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws … The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment. But it’s a big fat stinking lie! … It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country … Before the president was even sworn into office, they met and they hatched a conspiracy of public deception to try to guarantee his re-election in 2012.
That’s rich! Next time someone does you a favor and tries to see your side of an issue, be sure to accuse them of plotting against you on that issue. See what happens.
Here is what ThinkProgress.org had to say about LaPierre’s statement:
LaPierre’s iron-clad logic is that Obama’s failure to take any action against gun owners in his first term means he is conspiring to launch an all-out assault on their rights in his second term. Equally ridiculous is LaPierre’s suggestion that he somehow has secret knowledge that the president “makes fun of gun-owners” when he’s in private or had a conspiratorial meeting with advisers before he took office where he plotted the Second Amendment’s downfall.
“Our freedom is at risk at this election like never before,” LaPierre claimed at the beginning of his speech, using the same fear-mongering the NRA has depended on since Obama took office to enhance their own membership and financial contributions.
It’s unclear, however, why anyone should believe the NRA’s paranoia. By LaPierre’s logic, Obama also has a secret plan to launch a manned mission to Uranus, convert the nation to Pastafarianism, and wipe out the pink flamingo. After all, Obama has done exactly as much to accomplish these three goals as he has done to undermine gun owners’ rights.
