Please stop forwarding hoaxes and rumors to me!

Like almost everyone else with an email account, I get more spam than legitimate emails. Among the spam are countless chain emails forwarded to me by well-meaning people I know. Many of these are hoaxes and rumors which an endless chain of senders fail to verify.

For example, for several months there has been a flood of emails regarding HR.45 and S.2099 -- bills before Congress. These two bills are getting a lot of people fired up, but the bills are actually of no concern.

HR.45 is an enhanced "assault weapon" ban and is currently stuck in committee with no co-sponsors. Because Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid fear the gun vote more than they do Sarah Brady, this bill is going nowhere fast.

S.2099 was a bill that would have required gun owners to list their guns in their tax returns and pay a tax on each one. This bill expired without passing 9 years ago and consequently is no threat.

I commend everyone for being concerned about their favorite issues (so long as they are adequately informed). More specifically, I commend the millions of people worldwide who are concerned about preserving gun rights. But we all need sound information to avoid annoying our congressmen (and other recipients of our email alerts) with invalid concerns.

For non-gun issues, we need to check out rumors at sites like http://www.snopes.com/, http://www.hoaxbusters.org/, and urbanlegends.about.com. Only when we know the contents of the email are factual and relevant should anyone judiciously forward them to others.

Regarding gun rights, I suggest everyone to go to https://secure.nraila.org/EmailSignup.aspx to sign up for daily email alerts from the NRA so they get gun rights information from a reliable source rather than rely on rumors and hoaxes. Also, when we get emails regarding some threat to our gun rights, we need to check 'em out by going to the NRAILA website to "search" for the issue and verify it before forwarding or writing to Congress.

While we're on the subject of gun rights, join the NRA! Without their efforts, backed up by an overwhelming membership, we would have already lost everything and may yet loose not only our gun rights, but all other rights that are enforced by an armed citizenry.

"Americans need never fear their country because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation." — Thomas Jefferson

"When the government fears the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny." — Author Unknown