Facebook's Fact-Checker Doesn't Understand What A Gun Ban Is

AP Photo/Ben Margot, File

It seems there’s not a single Democrat running for president that’s not advocating for some kind of gun ban. It’s the cause du jour among the Left at the moment, despite not all Democrats being anti-Second Amendment. Still, they’re going to push for it.

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It also seems that social media has at least some influence on our elections as most people have it and use it regularly. It’s obligatory these days, or so it seems. In a supposed effort to combat fake news, Facebook has teamed up with fact-checkers to warn people if the news they’re seeing is legitimate or not.

However, these third-party fact-checkers often have an agenda of their own, which also seems to include fake news of their own.

Last month, the NRA’s Facebook page posted a photo of Joe Biden with the message: “Joe Biden calls for gun ban.” This was in reference to Biden’s well-known and very explicit stance that he wants to ban AR-15s and like semiautomatic rifles

There is no dispute about this. As vice-president, Biden responded to a petition by gun control activists demanding a ban on “AR-15-type weapons” by stating: “I want to say this as plainly and clearly as possible: The President and I agree with you. Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines should be banned from civilian ownership.”

More recently as a candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination, Biden published what he called a “Plan for Educator’s, Students, and our Future.” Among its agenda items was to “[d]efeat the National Rifle Association” by “championing legislation to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines – bans [Biden] authored in 1994.”

So yes, he wants a gun ban. And not just on some exotic or unusual types of firearms known only to criminals or the military but on what are in fact the most popular types of centerfire rifles in America today.

After the NRA post, Facebook appended a link to a Politifact story that rated the NRA’s claim as “Mostly False.”

Politifact did not deny that Biden wants to ban AR-15s and similar guns, nor did it deny those types of firearms are very common and popular in the U.S.

Nevertheless, it insisted that “saying Biden calls for a gun ban could lead readers to believe he’s seeking to outlaw all firearms.”

This is classic use of a strawman by Politifact.

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I agree. The phrase “gun ban” simply means Biden wants to ban guns of at least some type. It’s vague, sure, but it’s also a term for any action that seeks to ban guns. It applies to bans on one model of a firearm or a total ban of everything that shoots a bullet at all.

The problem with the Politifact story is that had this been a progressive group making a claim like this about a progressive cause, they’d have called it legit because, despite the vagueness of the term, it’s correct.

It’s a blatant double standard.

Then again, Facebook has never been a supporter of Second Amendment rights. Remember when you could buy or sell guns on Facebook? All it did was facilitate legal face-to-face transfers in states where that was still permitted. However, they banned those on the platform despite little evidence criminals or other unsavory sorts were purchasing guns that way. It should be noted that criminals are still buying guns on Facebook, though.

Politifact’s bias is quite obvious in this, and it needs to be called out. A lot.

Biden does want to ban a large number of guns. He wants to outlaw the most popular firearm in the country. That’s a gun ban any way you want to cut it.

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