Anti-gun lawmakers often try to present themselves as knowledgeable about firearms. After all, they need to seem like they know what they’re talking about if they’re going to regulate something. The problem is, they rarely do.

As a result, we hear all kinds of outlandish claims about these weapons which typically become the fodder for jokes. Anyone else remember 30-round magazine clips?

Those are just gaffes from a lack of understanding. A lawmaker doesn’t understand what a magazine is versus a clip and they just all ramble together. They’re still inexcusable, but they’re understandable if you take a moment and think about it. After all, before you knew anything about guns, what would you have said?

What’s not understandable or excusable is when a legislator just makes up crap. That’s what Florida’s Rep. Frederica Wilson did yesterday on Twitter.

The children that were gunned down at Sandy Hook with an assault rifle never had a chance. Their bodies had to be removed with a shovel; they were smashed to pieces! These weapons are designed to rip bodies apart! Who needs a weapon like that? #BanAssaultWeaponsNow pic.twitter.com/N1sqeLD2jA

— Rep Frederica Wilson (@RepWilson) August 19, 2019

That isn’t just a case of being wrong. That’s a damn lie.

Now, I can’t say definitively that the lie originated with Wilson. Who knows, someone else told her that and she’s just parroting the lie, but it’s a lie just the same.

Worse, it’s a lie that’s being used to create a visceral and emotional reaction in an effort to ban an entire category of weapons. It’s trying to convince people that these weapons are so horrible that they simply have to be banned.

It’s not enough to just bring up the shooting at Sandy Hook, a shooting that is still a sore point for many Americans due to the young age of the victims. No, it’s important for Wilson to present this horrible memory as incomplete, that we didn’t know these weapons are capable of tearing young people into literal pieces.

Only, they aren’t.

The 5.56 round isn’t some plutonium-tipped nightmare that rips human bodies to shreds, even small bodies. It’s actually a pretty small round when you look at it. It’s not even legal for hunting deer, and not because of the carnage it creates but because of the high likelihood that the hunter wouldn’t get a clean kill.

That’s right, it has a hard time taking down a deer, but it annihilates human flesh on contact.

Look, I can deal with someone opposing the Second Amendment. I can debate with them and hope to show them the error of their ways, though I don’t actually expect to. Someone who is simply wrong or misguided is easy to deal with. Someone who simply doesn’t like guns and doesn’t want to agree with the Founding Fathers on the right to keep and bear arms is something I can deal with as well.

What I refuse to just accept are outright lies by legislators who are trying to justify infringing on my civil liberties. I won’t tolerate someone like that woman–a woman I couldn’t take seriously due to her choice of headwear alone–lying to the American people in an effort to create an emotional reaction that would sway them to back that infringement on our civil liberties.

Rep. Frederica Wilson is a literal embarrassment to the United States House of Representatives and the Democratic Party. Considering the crowd that’s part of that Party right now, that’s saying something. She’s not the only one, mind you, but she’s an embarrassment none the less.

Wilson needs to be called up short on her fabrications and provocations. The problem is, her party won’t do it.