Friday, November 09, 2012

No, There Is No UN Global Gun Ban

I've enabled ads on this blog -- or failed to disable them, as the case may be -- which means that you may see interesting things here from time to time. Right now, for example -- "now" being that click on the calendar when I decided to write this -- there's an ad that says "Hillary Welcomes Global Gun Ban" and invites you to click on a link to sign a petition opposing the UN Small Arms treaty.

 Don't do it. It's bullshit. Untrue. Made up. A complete fabrication. An idiotic misrepresentation compounded by a stunning ignorance of American law, the constitution, and a complete lack of sense. Snopes.com rates it completely false.

Here's the thing: There is no end to the Idiocy that permeates the Internet. In the old days, this kind of nonsense was passed around via copies of copies of typewritten screeds. Now, it makes the rounds again and again via blog posts, e-mail blasts, and cross-links. That still doesn't make it true.

Why does this keep happening? Simple. Most people do not have the time or the inclination or the know-how to research things. They click on a link that some friend forwarded and they assume that it's gospel. They listen to somebody on Fox News who spouts this kind of nonsense and they assume that it's true because it's on TV. And somehow, only Fox News has this kind of exclusive information which, conveniently, is ignored by the "lame-stream" media.

There's a reason why the rest of the media is ignoring it: It's bullshit.

Here's a simple test: If one person says that they are completely sane and everybody else is crazy, there's a good chance that they have things backwards. The same goes for Fox News. If they say one thing and tell you that the reason everybody else is saying something else is because of their "liberal agenda," they just might have things backwards. It just might be because Fox News has an agenda and nobody else does.

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