Snopes Gets This One Disastrously Wrong

Snopes, who likely didn’t consult any experts in this claim, say that it’s “Mostly True” that “President Trump signed a bill blocking Obama-era background checks on guns for people with mental illnesses.” Oh, how I wish for a fact checking site that just presented the facts without having to draw conclusions for me. This article is short on any actual facts, except a blurb from the AP, who likely know no more on gun laws than the person who write this article on Snopes. This is at best mixed, because while it’s not an outright lie, it’s a huge lie of omission.

Here FactCheck.org did a much better job of spelling out the facts of the issue. They seem to have done some actual research. So if you see people spreading that Snopes bullshit around, counter with this. Also note that it wasn’t just gun rights advocates who were against this rule. It was a broad coalition. I wrote about this issue back when it was happening, in a panel discussion given by Chris Zealand. By that time they had pushed the rule back from what it was originally to something that would have affected far less people, at least.

4 thoughts on “Snopes Gets This One Disastrously Wrong”

  1. SSA would assign a Fiduciary to handle your finances because you couldn’t balance your checkbook. According to the SSA, that was mental illness and you can’t have a gun. Thank obama for instituting that.
    I’m not certain if he also rolled back the same rule by the VA.

  2. “It is true that Trump signed a bill”, yes.

    Very impressive, guys.

    (I’ll be fair to Snopes in that that one at least links to their detailed analysis, which does talk about how it really isn’t about “mentally ill” people, etc.

    But even being fair to them won’t make that analysis not disastrously bad, essentially tailored to produce a completely false impression.)

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