A viral tweet this week alleging a 20-year-old with an expired ID was able to buy an AR-15 rifle in five minutes is a lie.

It’s a damned lie.

The viral tweet, which has been shared by more than 9,000 social media users, quotes a two-year-old blog post written by then-20-year-old blogger Cody Davis.

The quote reads: “I was able to buy an AR-15 in five minutes. I’m 20 and my ID is expired.”



Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's lying.

Davis reveals in the third to last paragraph of his 800-plus-word story that he didn’t go through the entire process of purchasing the firearm. He didn’t even fill out the necessary paperwork, which would have put him through the required background check.

Yet, this is the headline that was published two years ago by The Tab: “I was able to buy an AR-15 in five minutes.”

No he wasn’t, according to his own reporting.

Seconds. It took seconds for the salesman to take an AR-15 off the shelf and begin selling it to me. If I had stayed for maybe three minutes longer to fill out less paperwork than I did for the hiring process at my school’s bookstore, I would’ve driven home with an AR-15.

Davis' false claim found renewed popularity following a terrible school shooting last week in Florida. His lie was resurrected in a viral tweet, and it was soon shared on social media by gun control enthusiasts, including CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

When it was pointed out that Davis had not, in fact, purchased a firearm in five minutes, Cuomo, who regularly insists on just the facts, doubled down for some reason, defending the obviously fraudulent, two-year-old blog post.

“Isn’t the point that the kid’s age and lack of ID wasn’t a deterrent? and this isn’t all gun shops. Place I bought my shotgun basically goes farther than law requires and makes judgments about whom to sell to. Point is the system should be better,” he tweeted.

This is absurd, and that Cuomo felt the need to defend it is even more absurd. Davis’ blog post is the equivalent of me saying I was “able to buy a Tesla” in five minutes because I went to an auto show two weeks ago.

Honestly, this dishonest brand of activism is likely one of the biggest reasons why gun control advocates have seen no movement in their favor in the last few years, despite several high-profile mass shootings. Bad faith actors only instill distrust and encourage otherwise good faith participants to tune out entirely.

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Full disclosure: This author is a paid contributor with CNN/HLN.