Cite that a good guess is 5% of the signers are illegal users of marijuana?
5% of everyone are illegal users of marijuana.
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)
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.
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.
The phrase you are looking for is the Fallacy of Division.
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.
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?
Well, those are just examples, and there are plenty of others (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.
I didn’t go that far back. But your own link shows that other gun groups were hotly opposed.
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. In the past year,the effort has won victories in many states (pdf):
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Their purpose is not debate but indoctrination.
I think continued demographic shifts away from rural areas to suburban and urban areas is probably a bigger cause.
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.
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.