# Gun lobby's lies **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 9, 2016, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550 "2016-01-09T02:00:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/41 "2016-01-11T05:26:29Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > The second part I can’t speak to. > > As for the first, the highest volume example may concern marijuana. When you buy a gun from a dealer, you have to sign ATF Form 4473 after checking a block stating that you are not a marijuana user. This is done roughly ten million times a year. A good guess is that at least 5% – and maybe 10% – of the signers are marijuana users, and are thus committing a federal felony. With aggressive law enforcement, it seems to me that you could at least triple the federal prison census. Cite that a good guess is 5% of the signers are illegal users of marijuana? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/42 "2016-01-11T07:05:19Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Cite that a good guess is 5% of the signers are illegal users of marijuana? 5% of everyone are illegal users of marijuana. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/43 "2016-01-11T08:24:44Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Cite that a good guess is 5% of the signers are illegal users of marijuana? > **[More Than Four in 10 Americans Say They Have Tried Marijuana](https://news.gallup.com/poll/184298/four-americans-say-tried-marijuana.aspx)** > > As Oregon becomes the fourth U.S. state to legalize recreational marijuana use, 44% of Americans say they have tried marijuana. When Gallup began asking about pot use in 1969, only 4% admitted to having tried it. > [@](#): > > A separate question asks Americans more directly if they smoke marijuana now. Slightly more than one in 10 Americans (11%) say they do, up from 7% in 2013, although the shift is also within the poll’s margin of error. If 11% of the population smoke green, then it’s pretty reasonable to say at least 5% of gun owners do (and probably much closer to 11%, unless you’re arguing that gun owners are massively different to the rest of the US population) ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/44 "2016-01-11T13:43:46Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > 5% of everyone are illegal users of marijuana. No. Five percent of Roman Catholic nuns are not, for example. Five percent of people who are regularly drug tested are not. Merely because five percent of the overall population is does not entitle you to assume that every conceivable division of the population also is. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/45 "2016-01-11T13:47:23Z")
> [@Gary\_Kumquat](#): > > [http://www.gallup.com/poll/184298/four-americans-say-tried-marijuana.aspx](http://www.gallup.com/poll/184298/four-americans-say-tried-marijuana.aspx) > > If 11% of the population smoke green, then it’s pretty reasonable to say at least 5% of gun owners do (and probably much closer to 11%, unless you’re arguing that gun owners are massively different to the rest of the US population) Not massively different, but different enough to call this conclusion into question. Gun owners are older, in general, just to choose one example. As your own link says, few respondents 65 or older answered that they smoke green. Also of note: the ATF questionnaire requires that one be an UNLAWFUL user. Presumably this means that states which permit lawful marijuana use are now off-limits when considering the whether answering ‘no,’ as a marijuana user is a federal offense. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/46 "2016-01-11T14:04:58Z")
The phrase you are looking for is the Fallacy of Division. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/47 "2016-01-11T14:51:31Z")
The most obvious out-and-out falsehood I regularly see promulgated by the gun lobby is that “we have enough gun laws and should enforce those,” though their legislative agenda is actually to [ensure as little enforcement as possible](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/02/07/nra-interferes-with-atf-operations/1894355/). ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/48 "2016-01-11T16:15:29Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The most obvious out-and-out falsehood I regularly see promulgated by the gun lobby is that “we have enough gun laws and should enforce those,” though their legislative agenda is actually to [ensure as little enforcement as possible](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/02/07/nra-interferes-with-atf-operations/1894355/). How is that a lie exactly? In looking at the link, the three areas that it focused on were the 1986 FOPA provisions, the Tiahrt amendments, and changing burden of proof for agents investigating dealers. In what way are those activities, even if they are as the article characterizes, a falsehood in connection with the statement that we have enough gun laws and should enforce those? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/49 "2016-01-11T18:46:08Z")
Well, those are just examples, and there are plenty of [others](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/atf-gun-laws-nra) (allowing for the source). But even if you don’t accept the premise that the gun loby actively works against enforcement, it certainly doesn’t lobby to bolster it at all. Maybe other groups are different, but the NRA-ILA has never promoted a _single_ enforcement measure based on the press releases I looked over. ---
**Author:** ![JXJohns](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jxjohns/32/469_2.png) [@JXJohns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JXJohns)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/50 "2016-01-11T18:57:26Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Well, those are just examples, and there are plenty of [others](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/atf-gun-laws-nra) (allowing for the source). But even if you don’t accept the premise that the gun loby actively works against enforcement, it certainly doesn’t lobby to bolster it at all. Maybe other groups are different, but the NRA-ILA has never promoted a _single_ enforcement measure based on the press releases I looked over. [Except for one that was pretty successful…](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Exile) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/51 "2016-01-11T19:07:09Z")
I didn’t go that far back. But your own link shows that other gun groups were hotly opposed. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/52 "2016-01-11T19:11:29Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Well, those are just examples, and there are plenty of [others](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/atf-gun-laws-nra) (allowing for the source). But even if you don’t accept the premise that the gun loby actively works against enforcement, it certainly doesn’t lobby to bolster it at all. Maybe other groups are different, but the NRA-ILA has never promoted a _single_ enforcement measure based on the press releases I looked over. If we accept arguendo that the NRA-ILA has never promoted a single enforcement measure, how is it a falsehood that we have enough gun laws and should enforce those? That being said, the NRA supported Project Exile as JXJohns notes. The NRA supported the NICS enhancements after Virgina Tech. The NSSF supported many state level efforts to improve mental health reporting with their [FIX NICS campaign](http://www.fixnics.org/factinfo.cfm). In the past year,[the effort has won victories in many states (pdf)](http://fixnics.org/files/FixNICSReport.pdf): > [@](#): > > During the 2014 and 2015 legislative sessions NSSF > directed our focus on 11 states that were at the bottom > of the state rankings and would be prime candidates for > our FixNICS campaign. As an industry, we experienced > unprecedented success with victories in 9 of those states. Even looking at the Mother Jones article you linked (previously linked in this thread), it talks about funding levels, lack of registration databases, and record retention. How do you construe that as a falsehood in relation to the idea that we have enough gun laws and should enforce those? I think it’s a fair statement if you oppose their lobbying efforts. I don’t see how opposition to their lobbying efforts constitutes a lie or falsehood. The closest thing in this thread was the lead impacts on the environment, and even that was taken down. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/53 "2016-01-11T19:15:34Z")
I think the tie between funding and enforcement is pretty clear. An agency tasked with gun enforcement which sees an effective budget cut (in an era where federal law enforcement budgets have ballooned) is to me indicative of a desire to retard enforcement. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/54 "2016-01-11T19:23:28Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I agree that the NRA’s statement cannot be reconciled with Obama’s public record, and that’s fair to say it’s a lie. > > I suspect, though, that behind all the justifications, the NRA is actually saying, “We both know he wants to ban all guns, and just won’t admit it.” That is an untestable claim, and in my view falls outside the true/false continuum. There is of course no reliable way to know what he secretly wants. > > I also suspect they might be taking a page from Calvin, of “…and Hobbes,” fame. In one strip, Calvin and Hobbes are on his bed and Calvin announces loudly, “Are there any monsters under my bed tonight?” > > From beneath the bed several voices emerge: “Nope!” “No siree!” “Not at all!” > > “Good!” says Calvin fiercely. “I’d hate to have to toast them with my flamethrower.” > > Hobbes looks surprised. “You have a flamethrower?” he asks doubtfully. > > Calvin shrugs. “They lie. I lie.” This is pretty much it except that I rarely see outright lying from either side. The perceived deception from the gun rights side preys on the paranoia of their base. The perceived deception from the gun control side preys on the ignorance of their base. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/55 "2016-01-11T19:23:41Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I think the tie between funding and enforcement is pretty clear. An agency tasked with gun enforcement which sees an effective budget cut (in an era where federal law enforcement budgets have ballooned) is to me indicative of a desire to retard enforcement. But where is the lie or falsehood? I think we should do X instead of Y. Agency A performs X. I also think agency A should receive less funding. There is no lie or falsehood there. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/56 "2016-01-11T19:33:47Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Through the link _he_ answered? Go back to the link in my post, to the section marked "NRA Claim: “Ban the Manufacture, Sale and Possession of Handguns”, where it is explained > When he took another survey from the same group in 2003, his response to the question was this: Is the second quote supposed to support the notion that the first quote is really a mistake made by his campaign manager? Is it really so hard to believe that someone about to run for senator from Illinois in 2003 might answer the question differently than someone who was running for Illinois state senator from Chicago’s south side. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/57 "2016-01-11T19:38:00Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > The Mother Jones list is highly suspect. > > [http://www.weeklystandard.com/is-it-true-armed-civilians-have-never-stopped-a-mass-shooting/article/690808](http://www.weeklystandard.com/is-it-true-armed-civilians-have-never-stopped-a-mass-shooting/article/690808) Their purpose is not debate but indoctrination. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/58 "2016-01-11T19:39:28Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > Cigarettes have become much, much less cool than they were when I was in high school. I wonder if similar social pressure is tied to the declines in both hunting and gun ownership. Not banned, just less relevant and uncool. I think continued demographic shifts away from rural areas to suburban and urban areas is probably a bigger cause. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/59 "2016-01-11T19:45:24Z")
> [@Gary\_Kumquat](#): > > [http://www.gallup.com/poll/184298/four-americans-say-tried-marijuana.aspx](http://www.gallup.com/poll/184298/four-americans-say-tried-marijuana.aspx) > > If 11% of the population smoke green, then it’s pretty reasonable to say at least 5% of gun owners do (and probably much closer to 11%, unless you’re arguing that gun owners are massively different to the rest of the US population) Gun owners are not a simple cross section of America. They tend to be more rural; whiter; older; have testicles; more politically conservative. Of course there are plenty young black urban female liberals that have guns but old white conservative rural males are more likely to have guns. ---
**Author:** ![JXJohns](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jxjohns/32/469_2.png) [@JXJohns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JXJohns)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550/60 "2016-01-11T20:00:05Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I didn’t go that far back. But your own link shows that other gun groups were hotly opposed. Of course. The only player in the game however is the NRA. The rest are all a bunch of wanna bes and that’s about it. Anything the NRA does, is usually condemned by GOA. There are other groups but their claim to fame is usually that “they” are the only no compromise gun lobby, not like the NRA. The fact that anti gun groups also supported Exile would be enough for other pro gun groups to dismiss it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-lobbys-lies/742550.md?page=4)