February 02, 2015 09:39 AM UTC

Gun misinformation and hyperbole should be called out

• 10 Comments
• by: Jason Salzman

(Like we said – Promoted by Colorado Pols)



ColoradoPols did us a favor yesterday by trotting out some of the ridiculous misinformation delivered in 2013 by opponents of gun safety laws. And Pols pleaded with local reporters to correct such falsehoods this year.

As a example of what should be done, I direct your attention to a 2013 Denver Post editorial that corrected GOP Sen. Kent Lambert's statement, cited in the Pols post yesterday, that that lawmakers had “effectively banned gun ownership.”

Lambert’s statement, The Post wrote, was “not supported by the facts.”

Dahh, you say, but as Pols pointed out, that's what we need when our elected leaders stray from the obvious facts.

And it's also what we need when elected officials stray into wild hyperbole, that may not be demonstrably incorrect, per se, but should be called out as… wild hyperbole.

Last time around, for example, we heard this from respectable people under the gold dome:

Lambert: And now, you know, with everybody having their guns confiscated or taken away here over the next couple years, almost completely overturning the Second Amendment, what’s going to happen to our crime rate? [BigMedia editorial comment: two years have passed! Every legal gun owner still has her gun.]

And this in 2013:

State Rep. Kevin Priola compared banning some ammunition magazines to putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WWII.

And this in 2013:

Rep. Kevin Lundberg said on the radio that Colorado is getting “so close” to the point where he’ll be having his gun pried away from his “cold, dead hands.”

It's bad when a guy like Sen. State Sen. Randy Baumgardner claims falsely, as he did in 2013, that “hammers and bats” killed more people in America in 2012 than guns did.

His facts should be corrected.

But the scare tactics about gun confiscation should be confronted as well, with, among other things, the simple fact that it's been two years now and not a single legal gun holder has lost her weapon.