My grandfather was a writer and journalist for most of his adult life and had rather a way with words. One of my favorites was the phrase undulating lie. As far as I know, he invented the term and I have never heard anyone outside our family use it, but it really is quite descriptive. An undulating lie is when someone tells you something that is factually true, but so misleading as to constitute a lie. Like gawker.com saying…
Mark Meckler (pictured) is the co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and a big shot national Tea Party Leader. He supports Second Amendment rights, if you know what we mean. What we mean is he has been arrested for trying to carry a gun on a plane.
Um, no, that’s a lie. He didn’t try to “carry a gun on a plane” as if he were walking down the street. A street other than one in, you know, New York City.
What actually happened was that Mr. Meckler walked up to the Delta agent and, in complete compliance with FAA regs, presented his luggage which contained an unloaded Glock in a locked case. As required by the FAA, he informed the agent of the weapon whereupon the agent called the Port Authority police and Mr. Meckler was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon without a license. Did you catch that? Having an unloaded weapon in a locked case, inside a suitcase is considered “carrying concealed.”
But there’s more to the story than that and here is where things get interesting. Back in 1986 Congress passed and Reagan signed the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act, which, among other things, contains what is called the Safe Passage Provision. Basically what the Safe Passage Provision says is that if you are traveling from someplace where you may lawfully possess a firearm to someplace else where you may lawfully possess a firearm, as long as the firearm is unloaded and in a locked container, you are not subject to the firearms laws of the locales you pass through.
Prior to enactment of this law if you were flying from Virginia to Vermont for some hunting and your plane had to make an emergency landing in Massachusetts, the moment the plane touched down, you became a criminal unless you had a Mass. license for your weapon(s).
Unfortunately, this remains the state of affairs in New York, despite F.O.P.A. and the Safe Passage Provision. Going back almost a decade, the District Attorneys in several New York jurisdictions have flat out stated that they are not going to obey federal law (although I’ll bet they’d enforce the Hughes amendment’s “new machine gun” ban) and, according to the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, these prosecutors would actually rather prosecute these mala prohibita “offenders” than violent criminals.
However, I was talking about gawker.com before I got sidetracked, and having started out with undulating lies, Mr. Nolan quickly devolves into outright libelous character-assassination:
What was Meckler’s reason for toting a gun around America, legally or not? ‘Because he gets threats.’ For example, those bitches at Delta threatened to have him arrested for trying to carry a gun on a plane. Can you imagine? Just wait until Mark Meckler gets his gun back. Then we’ll see who’s boss.
Nice…but hardly unexpected. It’s a fairly typical ploy of the antis; when they don’t have any actual facts on their side (which they rarely do) they just start smearing the people they are prejudiced against in the hopes that by slinging enough mud no one will notice their utter paucity of hard information and logic.