People make mistakes. Anyone can screw up. I know I've screwed up plenty in my life and I try to extend grace to those who have also made mistakes.

But there's a difference between a mistake and willfully misrepresenting yourself as something you're not. Especially when you try to use that misrepresentation not just to give yourself clout with a particular group, but also use that to try and leverage political action.

That's what it looks like Calvin Polachek did. As Bearing Arms editor Cam Edwards previously reported, he lied about having lost his brother and best friend in a mass school shooting that never happened.

And as the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms noted in a press release on Monday, it's indicative of the depths some anti-gunners will go to.

The embarrassing exposure of a gun control activist’s tale about a school shooting in rural Pennsylvania which never happened illustrates just how far anti-gun fanatics will go in their crusade to disarm America, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said.

The dramatic tale of a school shooting at Dallas High School even found its way into a speech delivered by the author of this bogus report at the Kentucky state capitol in February, according to one published account. The fellow responsible for this canard, Calvin Polachek, has been denounced even by the gun prohibition lobbying group which initially gave him the chance to spread his deceit. Moms Demand Action, part of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety lobby, hosted the February rally, but now admits Polachek “shamefully lied to our volunteers.”

“The exposure of this fraud not only illustrates how far anti-gun extremists will go in their effort to attack gun rights,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “but also shows how quickly other gun grabbers will accept an outright lie as gospel to justify their own prejudices against gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

“We’re also bemused,” he stated, “that the Mom’s group felt it necessary to condemn Polachek’s obvious attempt to ‘exploit the tragic, lived experience’ of true victims, because the gun prohibition lobby exploits tragedies all the time. They make a habit of it, and some have even made it a career. They manipulate data, make wild claims about gun rights organizations wanting ‘guns everywhere for everybody’ and engage in varying degrees of social bigotry in an effort to stereotype, demonize and ultimately ostracize gun owners. 

“What is alarming is how so many people willingly endorse such behavior and even engage in it,” Gottlieb observed. “Polachek’s tale is a symptom of a bigger problem, which is the blatant prejudice practiced against the Second Amendment community by politicians, the media and self-righteous extremists who have convinced themselves that turning rights into regulated privileges will somehow prevent violent crime, improve society and ultimately create some sort of Utopia. Maybe what upsets the gun control crowd most about Polachek’s prevarication is that he got caught and exposed.”

I mean, this sure doesn't help their case, does it?

How many other "survivors" are nothing of the sort? How many sob stories are outright fabrications? I mean, we know that these groups aren't vetting people's stories in any way, so how many other lies are being leveraged to trample on our rights?

We probably will never know.

Polachek's fabrication was easily debunked. It was outlandish in that he claimed to have survived one of the worst mass school shootings in American history, only no one had ever heard of it. The fact that none of the organizers realized this makes it kind of hard to accept that any stories they push are true without verifying them first.

But Polachek is also a product of his generation, which is one where there's currency in being a victim. As a young, white man, he doesn't have a lot of victimization points, but if he can say he survived a school massacre, then he's got some clout that can be used to be taken seriously by some of his peers.

No, that doesn't excuse him. It's an understanding of how so many people in this day and age are setting the stage for more and more lies like this than anything else.

Over the years, we've seen a ton of lies from the anti-gun side. We're going to see more. Usually, they try to at least make their lies a little believable. Polachek, however, went too far and exposed the whole gambit. We know what they don't do with the sob stories they trot out for public consumption. They don't verify anything.

One would imagine they will going forward, but until I see evidence of that happening, I'm not going to believe it.