‘Gun tax bill,’ plan to disarm the elderly prove to be hoaxes
September 1, 2009

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

About 100 years before anyone had ever heard about the Internet or World Wide Net (WWW), Mark Twain, a journalist as well as novelist-humorist, had warned that people should not believe anything they hear and half of what they read.

His statement implied that while hearsay was probably always wrong, print media of his day was only believable 50% of the time.

In recent years, the Internet has expanded in so many ways that it has to be considered, at best, no more reliable than print journalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While there is a tremendous amount of valuable information on the Internet, the proliferation of blogs and websites and the ability of any Web user to instantly share “news” and comment with an infinite number of people all over the world can pose problems. To my knowledge, there is no spam filter for veracity.

What further complicates matters is that creative satire and other humor devices can be mistaken for factual information and then spread to other interested parties.

Having spent so many years in the news business, I like to believe that the staff at Gun Week—as well as many other journalists—really try to get their facts straight without embellishment, except in the case of editorials and commentaries in which a subjective point of view prevails.

As part of our regular activities in the news business, especially gun news business, we try to fact check and source check every story that comes across our desks. Over the years past 40-some years, Gun Week has always tried to get the story straight, and report any discrepancies. Frequently, we respond to reader queries by phone, snail mail or email.

And recently, we have answered a number of questions about two specific stories having to do with gun legislation and regulation, which is why I decided to discuss those stories in this column about 10 days ago.

But I received a helping hand in the Aug. 14 email alert provided on a daily basis by the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA). That one concerns “SB-2099,” sometimes referred to as the “Gun Tax Bill.”

The NRA-ILA alert noted that “Over the past few months, NRA-ILA has received hundreds of e-mails warning us about ‘SB-2099,’ a bill that would supposedly require you to report all your guns on your income tax return every April 15.

“Like many rumors,” NRA-ILA continued, “there’s just a grain of truth to this one. Someone’s recycling an old alert, which wasn’t even very accurate when it was new.”

The NRA went on to explain that nine years ago there was actually a US Senate bill that would have taxed handguns, not all guns. Introduced by anti-gun Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), it would have moved handguns under the National Firearms Act’s tax and registration scheme. It had nothing to do with anyone’s personal Form 1040.

“Fortunately,” the NRA concluded, “S. 2099 disappeared without any action by the Senate, back when Bill Clinton was still in the White House. We reported about it back then, just as we report about new anti-gun bills every week. Now, it’s time for gunowners to drop this old distraction and focus on the real threats at hand.”

Thankfully, there are other sources, including Internet sites, where the “Gun Tax” story and others like it can be vetted. Some of them even trace the histories of bogus news. A few such sites include: Snopes.com; UrbanLegends.com; FactCheck.org, and Politifact.com.

One such site which Gun Week had checked claimed that the “Gun Tax” story was an old rumor dating back to September 2000, and also said that no such bill was introduced in 2009.

Snopes.com said of the common email about the “Gun Tax” still being circulated, which claimed “This is an amendment to the Internal Revenue Act of 1986. This means that the Finance Committee can pass this without the Senate voting on it at all.”

“Poppycock,” Snopes.com exclaimed. “The law would involve a revision of the Internal Revenue Act, yes, but this bill has to go through standard Senate protocols before it can be passed. Besides, didn’t a previous sentence just say it would become public knowledge only after it is ‘voted into law?’ ”

Snopes.com also cited an earlier attempt by NRA-ILA to drive a stake through the heart of this rumor dated May 29, 2009. Then, as now, NRA-ILA was urging people to focus on the real, current threats to their gun rights rather than rumor and hearsay.

The “Gun Tax” hoax is not the only rumor currently in circulation, mostly through the Internet, but also at gun clubs and, I am sure, a neighborhood bar or two.

There’s also one about an Obama Administration proposal that would ban guns for the elderly. It even claims that news of this proposal was first published by United Press International (UPI) on January 27, 2009. Other versions, also claiming to have been a news story filed by UPI on July 2, 2009.

“Guns to be banned for elderly” was the bogus headline.

This one reads:

“Deputy Attorney General Designate David Ogden is circulating a draft of an executive order in which, among other things, firearms possession would be severely limited to people over 60.

“An assistant to Ogden told us, ‘It appears that in these changing times, it is no longer necessary to allow the elderly to be armed. With all of their physical ailments and increasing senility, to leave them in control of a deadly weapon would be ludicrous.’

“While the Executive Order may sound too powerful, experts in Constitutional law state that it is not actually un-Constitutional.

“ ‘It’s a question of wording,’ states Columbia Law Professor, Dr. John Braxton. ‘The Constitution forbids the Congress, that is, the legislative branch, from passing any laws infringing on gun ownership. The executive branch is not included in this proviso. As long as the Congress doesn’t get involved, it’s technically a non-issue.”

“The Justice Department was tossing the idea of a gun ban for seniors during the Carter and Clinton Administration, but public opinion stopped these initiatives. Now, the Obama White House believes differently.

“An unnamed aide close to Ogden agreed to talk on the condition of anonymity.

“ ‘Clinton and Carter didn’t have as much of a mandate as President Obama. They were both Southerners, and the Second Amendment was sacrosanct to their constituents. However, President Obama comes from a new sort of politics, where divisive issues like firearms do not apply to him.’

“ ‘Quite frankly, it’s a shame that no one has had the good conscience to have done this already. It’s a simple process, and the majority of the American people will understand it and follow the law.’

“The enforcement mechanism for this particular executive order has not been published. It is likely that the confiscation of weapons will be similar to Great Britain’s handgun ban, in which citizens willingly gave the weapons to police.
“It is expected that the executive order will be given around July 1, when senior-related gun deaths reach their peaks.”
What’s the truth about a proposal to disarm the elderly: It’s a fake. There was no such executive order draft and there was no such United Press International story.
This hoax first surfaced in January 2009 and was still being circulated during the Summer of 2009. It was traced to a satirical blog site back at the beginning of the year and a trip to that site shows that the story was clearly labeled “a satire” when it was first published for no other apparent reason but that someone was having fun.
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