Summary: When Americans demand accuracy from their reliable sources, reform will become possible for America. The Left cannot correct the Right on this flaw, nor vice versa. So long as we (Left and Right) accept lies from our friends and fellow partisans, then our leaders will lead us by lies. So long as we remain sheep, they will treat us like sheep. Here we have yet more examples.

Adolph Hitler said:

This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!

Like so many quotations circulated by the Right in America, it’s fake. In fact, the “Hitler confiscated guns” story is largely fake. For details, Chase Mader refers us to this great paper: “On the NRA, Adolph Hitler, Gun Registration, and the Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Culture Wars”, Bernard E. Harcourt (Prof Law, U Chicago), Fordam Law Review, November 2004 (pdf of draft here; image of final here). Also, Hitler was quite popular in Germany until he lost the war.

For a history of this fake quote, for those of you who want the non-scholarly version, see this entry at The Straight Dope.

More wonderful pro-gun quotes: fake advice from the Founders

Fake quotes about gun rights could fill a book. Repeatedly debunked, still widely circulated — and believed. The frequency of lies in our public debates reveals us much about 21st century America — and the educational value of the Internet.

(a) This quote sounds definitive! Too bad Jefferson never said it.

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.”

It’s from Cesare Beccaria’s Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1764). Jefferson’s disagreed. See his note on this: “False ideas of utility”. See the details here.

(b) But I’ve heard this fake quote one a thousand times! How sad people lie to us so often.

“No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

The actual quote is “No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms within his own lands.” It’s from the second and third drafts of the Constitution for Virginia of June 1776. It was not in the adopted version. See the details here.

(c) This is my favorite. A powerful quote, although not by one of the Founders. It’s also fake.

See Factcheck.org for details.

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