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“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeatingit, people will eventually come to believe it.”

“The most brilliant propagandist techniquewill yield no success unless one fundamentalprinciple is borne in mind constantly: it mustconfine itself to a few points and repeat themover and over.”

Those two quotes are the product ofthe evil genius of Joseph Goebbels,Adolf Hitler’s Reich minister of pro-

paganda in Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, asMachiavellian and manipulative as they are,they seem to be the only truths certain peo-ple, including Michael Bloomberg and Presi-dent Obama, have retained from all thelearned experiences of World War Two.I wrote about Michael Bloomberg and

his merry band of billionaires attempting tobuy the gun laws state by state in placeswhere they don’t even live. (See “Laws ForSale, Prices Slashed,” RANGE, Spring 2015.)They have already been successful gettinguniversal background-check laws passed inWashington and Oregon, and Nevada is nextin their crosshairs (they should pardon theexpression) with a ballot initiative beingtouted by Nevadans for Background Checks,an offshoot of Bloomberg’s Everytown [sic]for Gun Safety. The ultimate goal is to marchtheir law across the land until it is the law ofall the land.Why? And does anybody really fall for it?Unfortunately, the Pew Research Center

recently released the results of a poll thatshow 70 percent of all Americans support“the creation of a federal database to track allgun sales.” That is a dramatic switch fromjust eight months prior, when the majorityof Americans opposed such registration. So,yes, people do fall for it. What has caused thechange?Read Joseph Goebbels’ maxims again:

“The most brilliant propagandist techniquewill yield no success unless one fundamentalprinciple is borne in mind constantly: itmust confine itself to a few points and repeatthem over and over.”Let me lay out Jameson’s rules for mak-

ing a point. If I want to convince you of

something, I would be well-advised not touse data from a source that is sympathetic tomy point of view. If I were to now quote datafrom the NRA, for example, you would bewise to question the objectivity of both mydata and my fundamental position. Instead, Iwill quote from the notoriously anti-gunWashington Post, whose “Fact Checker” col-umn awarded President Obama three Pinoc-chio’s for dishonesty after he made thefollowing statement multiple times: “The law already requires licensed gun

dealers to run background checks, and overthe past [20] years that’s kept millions of thewrong people from getting their hands on agun. But it’s hard to enforce that law when asmany as 40 percent of all gun purchases areconducted without a background check.”That 40 percent statistic is a lie and has

been known to be such for many years. It isa lie that has its genesis in a widely ques-tioned and challenged study conducted byPhilip Cook of Duke University and Jens

Ludwig of the University of Chicago. Cookand Ludwig’s study was initially conductedin 1994, the same year the Brady Law wentinto effect requiring background checks(the National Instant Criminal BackgroundCheck System, NICS). So, by definition, toquote the Post, “some, if not many, of theguns [cited in the study] were bought in apre-Brady environment.”That alone might give you cause to ques-

tion the validity of this study and its frequentreiteration by the president and many otheranti-gun entities, but now consider this: byCook and Ludwig’s own admission, thestudy was based on a telephone survey ofprecisely 251 people. Given that in 1994there were, depending on who did the calcu-lating, approximately 50- to 80-million gunowners in the United States, 251 peopleseems, ah, shall we say, an unambitious stabat the truth. As the liberal and anti-gunWashington Post itself pointed out, with asample size of 251 people, there will be avariance of plus or minus six percentagepoints, making the survey’s reliability evenmore questionable.But it gets worse. Here’s the Post again,

writing about the survey technique: “More-over, when asked whether the respondentbought from a licensed firearms dealer, thepossible answers included ‘probablywas/think so’ and ‘probably not,’ leavingopen the possibility the purchaser was mis-taken. (The ‘probably not’ answers werecounted as ‘no.’) When all of the ‘yes’ and‘probably was’ answers were added together,that left 35.7 percent of respondents indicat-ing they did not receive the gun from alicensed firearms dealer. Rounding up getsyou to 40 percent, although, as we notedbefore, the survey sample is so small it couldalso be rounded down to 30 percent.”At this point, you might well be asking

yourself who could possibly be so stupid asto cite such a seriously flawed survey as calci-fied fact. Well, President Obama for one, andNevadans for Background Checks for anoth-er. The president managed to take the lie onestep further.The original study was intended to track

“gun acquisitions” and “transactions,” but

The World According to GoebbelsThis is not the time to trust benign goodwill.

By Jameson Parker

“The lie can be maintainedonly for as long as the

State can shield the peoplefrom the political,

economic, and/or militaryconsequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally

important for the State touse all of its powers torepress dissent, for the

truth is the mortal enemyof the lie, and thus byextension, the truth is the greatest enemy

of the State.”

JOSEPHGOEBBELS, ADOLFHITLER’S REICHMINISTEROF PROPAGANDA INNAZIGERMANY

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SPRING 2016 • RANGE MAGAZINE • 23

President Obama’s state-ment, one that he keepsrepeating (“If you tell alie often enough”), usesthe phrases “gun pur-chases” and “gun sales.”

Words are importantand precise things. If Iwere lucky enough tohave a wealthy unclewho died and left me hisrare Colt Peacemaker,that would qualify as atransaction where Iwould have acquired ahandgun. If my wifegave me a vintageM1911 as a Christmaspresent, that too wouldbe a transaction where Iacquired a handgun. Thestudy includes that kindof transfer of ownershipin its data, even thoughfederal law makes specif-ic exemptions for “abona fide gift betweenimmediate family mem-bers, including spouses,parents, children [and]siblings,” and also for“the death of anotherperson for whom theunlicensed transferor isan executor or adminis-trator of an estate ortrustee of an estate creat-ed in a will.” Yet Presi-dent Obama still quotesthe figures using alreadyflawed numbers thatinclude transfers heknows are exempt underfederal law, and refers tothem as sales.

But even if the 40 per-cent figure is nowhere nearaccurate, what’s the harm in Nevada’s mak-ing the law a little tighter? It’ll only affect badguys, right?

Under the terms of the Brady Law, theNational Instant Criminal BackgroundCheck System contains the following pro-vision: “The NICS is not to be used toestablish a federal firearm registry; infor-mation about an inquiry resulting in anallowed transfer is destroyed in accordancewith NICS regulations.” (That is a quote

from the FBI summary of the law.)That clause is in there precisely to pre-

vent any federal firearms registration. Butcertain states have opted to use their ownmuch tougher background check system,making the steps and requirements for pur-chasing a firearm even more stringent thanthey are at the federal level. If you read noth-ing else, read what is written into California’sversion of the Brady Law (for purposes ofbrevity and clarity I am quoting from the

Law Center to PreventGun Violence sum-mary): “Registry of firearm

transactions: Califor-nia law requires theAttorney General topermanently maintainand keep a registryof all information[emphasis mine] per-taining to the sale ortransfer of fire -arms reported toDOJ.”

So what is forbid-den by federal lawmay be allowed by thestates, sort of likesanctuary cities andmarijuana laws. IfNevadans for Back-ground Checks gets its“expanded law” inplace, that law willinclude permanentregistration, perhapsimmediately or per-haps later and inincrements, as it waspassed in California.

If you are anunabashed liberal whobelieves in the benigngoodwill of the gov-ernment, you maywell think, “What’s sobad about a federalregistry of firearms?”What’s wrong is thatbenign goodwill is atemporary and muta-ble thing that onlylasts as long as a gov-ernment believes itselfsecurely in power.Take another look at

Joseph Goebbels’ famous quote: “If you tell alie big enough and keep repeating it, peoplewill eventually come to believe it.” What isnot as famous are the sentences that imme-diately follow that one: “The lie can be main-tained only for as long as the State can shieldthe people from the political, economic,and/or military consequences of the lie. Itthus becomes vitally important for the Stateto use all of its powers to repress dissent, forthe truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and

“The 40-percent lie has been debunked, but that doesn’t stop Michael Bloomberg, or

President Obama, or any of the hydra-like anti-gunorganizations that Bloomberg is funding all over the

country from repeating the lie over and over.”

Joseph Goebbels, center, invented lies then repeated them over and over. True believers likeMichael Bloomberg, left, and Barack Obama repeat dubious statistics until they sound real.Bloomberg’s group has already been successful at getting universal background-check lawspassed in Washington and Oregon, and Nevada is next.

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thus by extension, the truth is thegreatest enemy of the State.”It is no coincidence that I am

quoting Adolph Hitler’s minister ofpropaganda, because one of the firstthings Hitler did when he came topower was to confiscate firearms,and he used a national registry to doso. Ironically, Hitler and the NaziParty had not created the registry. Itwas a preexisting system createdunder the Weimar Republic as a means ofcombating crime.But that’s not the only thing wrong with

the “expanded law” that Michael Bloombergand his Nevadans for Background Checkshope to pass. Unlike President Obama,NFBC does not quote the “40 percent” liedirectly (though it provides a link to thestudy on its website). Instead, it vaguelyrefers to the “millions of guns [that] changehands each year between unlicensed buyersand sellers, including strangers who meetonline or at gun shows—no backgroundcheck required, no questions asked.”Take a closer look at the “millions” of

guns sold without background checks. If youpurchase a firearm from your neighbor, theassumption of Nevadans for Background

Checks is that either or both of you might becriminals who would use the gun for illegalpurposes. Such an assumption is, by defini-tion, a violation of the presumption-of-innocence principle that has been afoundation of the law in all civilized nationsat least since sixth-century Rome. But let’sput the presumption of innocence aside andassume NFBC is right and both you andyour neighbor are career criminals prohibit-ed from owning firearms. Assume theexpanded background check has beensigned into law. Does anyone really believeyou and your neighbor are going to dutifullytake the time to drive down to your local fed-erally licensed dealer and submit to a back-ground check that neither of you canpossibly pass? Why bother passing a law no

criminal will pay attention to? TheNevada Legislature can pass a law for-bidding the sun to rise tomorrow, butthat won’t make it happen.The 40-percent lie has been

debunked, but that doesn’t stopMichael Bloomberg, or PresidentObama, or any of the hydra-like anti-gun organizations that Bloomberg isfunding all over the country fromrepeating the lie over and over. The

reason for that is because Bloomberg et al.intend to use the ballot initiative in thosestates that allow laws to be changed by popu-lar referendum, and that only works whenenough people are duped into believing agiven proposition. Purportedly, Maine andArizona will be the next two states on HizHonor’s wish list.Sadly, most news outlets in this country

either knowingly pass on misinformation—as the Las Vegas Sun did, fulsomely toutingthe 40 percent in its call for support of theproposed initiative, as well as its support forNevadans for Background Checks, MomsDemand Action, and Michael Bloomberg’sparent organization, Everytown [sic] forGun Safety—or are too lazy to track downaccurate information.There are exceptions, such as the Fact

Checker column in the Washington Post, andNevada’s own Reno Gazette-Journal, whichreached the following conclusion: “Thesource links given by Nevadans for Back-ground Checks do not lead to any indepen-dent research on gun background checks,but lead solely back to statements by a gun-control advocacy group that are unsupport-ed and ignore conflicting evidence. Thatsaid, one of the claims—that ‘millions’ ofguns were sold in 2012 without backgroundchecks—is likely true. Stricter gun back-ground checks may be helpful in reducinggun violence. They may not. But using vaguesource citations and flawed evidence doesnot help make one’s case.”Unfortunately, papers like the Washing-

ton Post and the Reno Gazette-Journal arerare exceptions, not the norm, and the resultis the steady drumbeat of lies, which eventu-ally hurt. As Joseph Goebbels also pointedout, “Think of the press as a great keyboardon which the government can play.” ■

Jameson Parker lives in California betweenthe San Joaquin Valley and the MojaveDesert. For more information, checkwww.readjamesonparker.com.

“Think of the press as a great keyboard

on which the government can play.”

JOSEPHGOEBBELSADOLFHITLER’S REICHMINISTEROF PROPAGANDA INNAZIGERMANY

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