I have had to type this so many times over the past six months that I thought I’d put it out here and just link to it. For all of you who have received the email where you have to list your guns on your tax return due to Senate Bill 2099 and get all kinds of licenses and register all your guns due to House Bill 45 (also called the Blair Holt Act), and it’s all “verified by Snopes,” the email is bullshit.

That email is worded where there are just enough pieces of truth that the entire pile of garbage in the email appears correct, too. I can’t recall where the email originated, I think with some little gun rights group that wanted to stir up some donations. If you get it, delete it. Please don’t forward it around. Everyone else has already done that.

Since I have a copy of the accursed email here, I’ll just beat on it one point at a time. SB2099, supposedly introduced on February 24, 2009, did not and could not have existed. Why? Because in February, the Senate was only up to bill number 1600 or so. Bills get consecutive numbers as they are introduced. If one were to have done a search for SB2099 through the Library of Congress a few months ago, there would have been no record found. I know, I looked for it. There may be a SB2099 at the moment but it doesn’t matter because it wouldn’t be this particular SB2099. Remember that we are at February of last year, so it’s the 111^th congress playing. Was there a SB2099 in the past that mentioned the Internal Revenue Service and guns? Yes, introduced February 24, 2000. Then ain’t now. That old bill would have required gun registration, but it died in committee with only two cosponsors. So, looks like Mr. Email Writer kind of fucked up by about ten years.

The other bill, HR45, was introduced in the 111^th congress. I’ve heard it’s been introduced in the past, too. The bill would require licensing of firearm purchasers and a lot of other ugly stuff. Introduced on January 6, 2009 by Bobby Rush, an Illinois representative (typical of Illinois politicians, I think), the bill has no cosponsors and was referred to the “Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security” on February 9, 2009 where it has collected dust ever since. Since this bill was actually introduced in the past year and is full of anti-gun drivel, it gives the email’s author somewhere to point links that really work. The bill can be found, opened and read in screaming terror. Or, ignored.

Again, please do not copy, send or forward the email when you get it. It really needs to just go away. If you want to panic over something, there are other things out there in the world probably deserving of panic. This email is not one of them. I do not know whether the person at the top of the email, a realtor in Orlando, Florida, is actually the author of the email, but if someone happens to know who originally did write it, please shoot him.