If I had a dollar for every time somebody gave incorrect firearm legal advice, I’d be sitting on a mega yacht in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean drinking scotch that is older than I am.
People who have no knowledge about something but talking about it authoritatively isn’t a new phenomenon nor is it restricted solely to gun laws. However, it was far more excusable in the past because the people who did it didn’t have access to the collective knowledge of humanity at their fingertips. If you’re posting something to Facebook then you’re using the Internet. Since you’re using the Internet, you can quickly look things up. For example, if I search for “machine gun law” in Google, the very first link that appears is the Wikipedia article on the National Firearms Act. A brief reading of that article will debunk the claim that anybody can easily buy a machine gun, which is a claim that I’ve seen posted a lot since the attack in Las Vegas.
There is no excuse to not perform at least a basic amount of due diligence this day and age. If you can post to Facebook, you can perform a search on Google to verify whether or not the claim you’re about to make it true or at least plausible. “But Chris,” I can hear somebody say, “why would I suspect that the thing I believe is false and needs to be verified?” Simple, if you didn’t come by that belief by doing your own search, you should suspect it of being false.
There’s already enough bad information being circulated. Rise above the masses, use your access to the collective knowledge of humanity and verify claims before you post them.