Obamacare is going to create a "stealth gun registry!"

October, 2013.

We can all count on ultra-conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh to push ridiculous, over-the-top conspiracy theories. Now he's got another.

According to him, Obamacare may be creating a "stealth" gun registration program.

Here's how his fevered mind works:  A U.S. company is being used to build Healthcare.gov. That company is associated with another company in Canada, which had once been tasked with creating the Canadian gun registration program.  Never mind that the Canadian company was dropped before they completed their effort, but that's evidence enough for this pundit to send out to all his listeners.

See and listen here.

Limbaugh referred to an article onBreitbart.com that claims a Canadian company, CGI, has a U.S. subsidiary, CGI Federal, that was paid $93.7 million to build HealthCare.gov. 

CGI was also once contracted to build a nationwide gun registry for the Canadian government. 

However, CGI's contract for the gun registry was canceled in 2007 because it was "significantly over budget" and a more conservative government took over the country.
According to MediaMatters.org, Limbaugh suggested their might be an anti-gun conspiracy in this report (audio below). 

"Here's a group that tried to put together a gun registry in Canada," said Limbaugh. "Oh yeah, we love those kinds of people. Gun registry, oh yeah, that's the kind of people we need." 

"While we're working on health care they can be, in a stealth way, establishing one of those here maybe, just ruminating, you know," added the radio host.

Just another wacko pro-gun conspiracy theory!

Obamacare will force gun owners to have electroshock therapy!

August, 2013.

Larry Pratt, Executive Director of the extremist pro-gun group, Gun Owners of America, is certainly no stranger to conspiracy theory mumbojumbo, as I have reported several times before.

This time he agrees with the ridiculous assumption, put forth by the Talk to Solomon Show, that Obamacare is going to force electroshock therapy on bipolar patients.  Then they make the even more ridiculous assertion that this diagnosis and treatment will be extended to gun owners who are defending themselves.

See the video here.  From the article and video:

During an episode of the Talk to Solomon Show on Tuesday, Stan Solomon noted that The Fort Myers News-Press had reported last week that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was becoming a popular treatment for bipolar disorder. 

“There’s saying, hey, it’s quicker than some drugs and all that type of thing,” Solomon observed. “But so is a bullet.” 

“But the fact is, I am telling you, I believe that we’re going to see things get worse before they get better, and you’re going to see people that are going to be — quote — unquote — incorrigible, however they define incorrigible, maybe resisting when people come crashing into your house,” he told Pratt. “Your thoughts? Because we’re becoming very much an able-to-defend-yourself and an unable-to-defend-yourself country.” 

“Well, I think part of that is what we’re seeing in Obamacare,” Pratt agreed. “This is going to be what you’re talking about several times over.”

Just another wacko pro-gun conspiracy theory!

The Sandy Hook school shooting wasn't carried out by a lone, insane young man, but rather by an Israeli "death squad!"

December, 2012. 

Racist commentator Mike Harris blames the Newtown shooting
on "death squads" from Israel

According to one anti-Semitic commentator, Mike Harris (editor of Veterans Today, former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, and GOP campaign finance chairman), Israel had a death squad kill those children because of America’s pro-Palestinian stance, or something.  He suggested these “death squads” were also responsible for the Gabby Giffords’ shooting in Tucson, the Aurora movie theater shooting, and the Norway mass shooting.  He goes on to blame “Jewish Senators” for wanting to take away guns from Americans, too, just for good measure. Here's a quote:

This is exactly what Israel did in Norway; the political party that voted sanctions against Israel was retaliated against by a “lone gunman” who killed 77 children. This is what Israel always does, they go after the children. It is what they do in Gaza every day. It is what was done in Norway. It is what happened at Sandy Hook. Nobody buys the “lone gunman” story anymore, not with the Gabby Giffords’ shooting, not with the Aurora “Batman” shooting, certainly not with Breveik, and certainly not in Connecticut.

He also suggests that the shooter, Adam Lanza, was really a “patsy” for the shooting.

Of course, he offers no actual evidence for any of his assertions. 

Just another wacko pro-gun conspiracy theory!

President Obama is going to round up gun owners and other conservatives into internment camps and become dictator!

November, 2012.

FEMA Corps is a new program which combines FEMA and AmeriCorps for assisting with natural and man-made disaster-response.  But, according to Janet Porter of the fundamentalist Christian extremist group Faith2Action, FEMA Corps is actually "a standing army to stifle dissent."  As she said (click to hear audio): 

Is it a standing army to stifle dissent? That’s what some think the real purpose is for the new group that the government calls FEMA Corps. In September, the Department of Homeland Security graduated its first class of 231 students, consisting of 18 to 24 year olds who were recruited from the President’s AmeriCorps volunteers.   

Some question whether they are really part of a new civilian security force that President Obama has called for in speeches. Reasons for the concern include FEMA’s 2,500 new armored vehicles that come complete with slots for machine guns. 

I know it sound’s unbelievable, but so does the fact that Homeland Security has purchased more than one billion bullets this year. It’s time to take a closer look into FEMA Corps!

The reference to FEMA's "one billion bullets" is another conspiracy theory advanced in August (see below). 

Joseph Farah, editor of the extreme fundamentalist, far-right conspiracy website, WorldNetDaily, then picked up Porter's theory and pushed it further over the cliff of sanity, suggesting that gun owners and other conservatives were going to be rounded up by FEMA Corps, at Obama's direction, and put into internment camps, as well as shutting down independent media, due process, and even the election process!  According to Farah:

I know it’s Halloween, but this is more terrifying than ghosts and goblins and vampires. 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If Barack Obama is re-elected Nov. 6 for a second term, he will declare a full-scale war on his domestic opposition. 

There may not be another free and fair election in America. 

I would expect due process to go the way of the horse and buggy. 

I think he will move to shut down and destroy all independent media. 

In fact, I think his biggest critics will be rounded up in the name of national security. 

Last week, for instance, with little fanfare, Obama issued an executive order establishing something that sounds so innocent on the surface – but it could prove to be a vehicle for the kind of political putsch I am describing. 

It establishes the “White House Homeland Security Partnership Council.”…Essentially, Obama wants to deputize “community organizers” like him to determine who represents a real threat to the republic.…If any Republican, conservative, independent journalist, pro-life activist, returning veteran, gun-rights activist, constitutionalist, Bible believer or critic of Obama thinks they will be safe in a second term under this would-be despot, they had better think again – real fast.

Wow! All of this because of the need for young people to volunteer to help with disaster response?  Talk about wacko!

Just another wacko pro-gun conspiracy theory!

"Operation Fast and Furious" was an attempt to justify gun control by creating gun violence in Mexico!

June, 2012.

Between 2006 and 2011, the ATF’s Project Gunrunner attempted to track straw purchases and illegal gun trafficking to Mexican drug cartels.  Since a database of gun sales isn’t allowed in America, and loose gun regulation, particularly in the state of Arizona, makes it almost impossible to prevent large gun sales and trafficking, the ATF had to work with a patchwork of local regulations to monitor and track gun sales to illegal parties.  Around 2000 guns were sold and attempted to be monitored as part of the program, but only a few small-time illegal gun sellers were actually arrested.  As a result of internal disputes, many guns went untracked, though the ATF never intended for those guns to “walk” out of their control, as discovered by a six-month investigation by Fortune magazine.  One federal agent, Brian Terry, was killed with one of those guns, as well as an unknown number of Mexican citizens.  Only around 700 of those guns have since been recovered.

The project was clearly a failure, with tragic consequences, but the NRA came up with a more extreme conspiracy theory.  According to them, Operation Fast and Furious, led by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, intentionally allowed thousands of guns to go into Mexico, hoping that the deaths of innocents would give more reason to pass stricter gun laws here in the United States and attack the Second Amendment.  This, despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that President Obama had any knowledge of the workings of the program, or any evidence that Holder was in control of the program, and despite the findings of Katherine Eban for a Fortune Magazine investigation that no guns were intentionally allowed to “walk” by the ATF.

Nonetheless, FOX News was quick to pick up the conspiracy and advertise it as news as well as GOP pundits like Rush Limbaugh, and certain conservative GOP politicians, such as Rep. Darrell Issa, Republican chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Said Rep. Issa:

“The whole point, don't forget, the whole point of Fast and Furious was to create mayhem in Mexico among drug cartels with American-made weapons easily procured so that you and I would stand up in outrage and demand tighter gun laws.  It was deceitful. It was sneaky.  It was going against the will of the American people. It was liberalism on parade. It's who these people are.  They want tighter gun laws.  Folks, I want to make this as simple as I can.  They created crimes.  There's no other way to characterize this.  They created, they manufactured crime.  They enabled crimes.  They saw to it that American guns ended up in Mexican drug cartel hands.  And, of course, those people get the guns, they use them. When, in fact, it probably was difficult for the drug cartels to get the guns.  It probably was not easy for the drug cartels to get the guns.  Certainly not walking into gun stores in Phoenix and elsewhere, then crossing the border. 

“So they set that up.  They created crimes.  It would be no different than if they wanted to ban airplanes, to engineer a bunch of crashes.  I'm trying to think of a smart analogy to give you.  If this bunch wanted all airplanes grounded, sabotage a bunch so they crash, and the people of the country demand that all airplanes be grounded.  They wanted these guns that were used in these crimes to come from America.” 

After the Fortune magazine investigation by Katherine Eban, one blog post by the People for the American Way summarized it thusly:

Eban’s reporting unearthed absolutely no evidence that the tactic of “gun walking”, which Rep. Issa and his allies continue to put front and center, was ever actually in play. “The ATF's accusers seem untroubled by evidence that the policy they have pilloried didn't actually exist”.

Predicated upon erroneous and misleading information, the Fast and Furious ‘scandal’ is heavy on political intrigue, yet light on substance. 

Just to pound a nail in the coffin of this conspiracy theory, a report by Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice inspector general, influenced by Eban's investigation, also found no evidence that knowledge of the ATF program ever reached the level of Holder, much less the President, prior to the end of the program, and that there was no conspiracy to reduce gun rights.

For over a year, it's been an article of faith on the right that Fast and Furious was a carefully constructed scheme directed by the White House to trash the Second Amendment and build support for more gun control laws. It wasn't. Neither the White House nor Eric Holder had any idea what was going on. It was just a local operation that was badly botched. This makes Fast and Furious officially yet another lunatic conservative conspiracy theory that has bitten the dust in the cold light of reality.

Just another wacko pro-gun conspiracy theory!