It is a simple statement of fact to note that gun control groups—without exception—deal in the currency of lies, deception, and emotional manipulation.

Mom Demand Action/Everytown has been excoriated numerous times by the press for lying about the number of school shootings in the United States. The Violence Policy Center has been laughed out of the room over their demonstrably false claims about the “threat” of concealed carriers. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) has cried wolf so many times about gun owners being “insurrectionists” that they’ve lost all credibility.

You can now add tiny States United To Prevent Gun Violence to that sad roster of charlatans, deceivers, and bullies.

The group created a fake gun shop in a New York City art gallery in a specific attempt to lure in first-time gun buyers. Once they entered the store, an actor pretending to be a gun store employee hands them firearms, and then tells the stunned customers that they were holding actual firearms used to kill other human beings in mass shooting, and accidental shootings.

Is it any wonder that they were surprised and shocked?

Of course, the salesman was lying. Gun control supporters always lie.

None of the firearms in the fake store were used to harm other human beings. Nor were they even the make and models of firearms that the actor/salesman ascribed to being used in certain crimes. At least one of the firearms the actor claims was used in a mass shooting—an Uzi submachine gun—has never been used in a single documented murder in the history of the United States.

In fact, these weren’t even real guns.

These were props, used with an ambush technique on unsuspecting victims, to elicit an emotional response.

If States United To Prevent Gun Violence was honest, they could have used realistic tags to describe the real history of these firearms.

How might they look?

Maybe something like this.

GLOCK 19

9mm

15-round standard capacity magazine (limited to a 10-round magazine in New York because we fear tools, and you my only load seven cartridges because we’re insane)

used by numerous law enforcement agencies and some U.S. military units

owned by hundreds of thousands of law-abiding American citizens

used in self-defense thousands of times to stop rapes, robberies, domestic violence, and attempted murder by law-abiding citizens just like you

an popular firearm for both informal recreational target shooting and several kinds of organized shooting sports

Uzi submachine gun

9mm

32-round standard capacity magazine

exported to over 90 countries for use as a personal defense weapon (PDW)

heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934

none have been manufactured or imported for the public since 1986 (29 years ago) thanks to the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986

never used in a violent crime in the history of the United States

Amusingly, other gun control supporters think that setting up a fake store with prop weapons and then using an actor to sell abject lies and half-truths is perfectly acceptable behavior.

I have a simple question for them.

If owning firearms really is so bad, so dangerous, and so deadly, why are you reduced to such elaborate deceptions to sell your views?

That is just one of the questions I’ll be asking them as I hijack their Twitter hashtag #gunswithhistory to share actual facts.

Update: Actor/Director Ned Luke of Grand Theft Auto 5 confirms that he was the actor who played the gun store employee.

We’re still attempting to determine whether the customers were actors as well. A representative of the advertising agency that produced the video has so far refused to answer that very direct question.