The U.S. Military Has Distributed a Survey Among Soldiers That Prepares Them For Shooting Civilians Who Resist Gun Control-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
The story is that a survey has been handed out among all U.S. fighting personnel which prepares them for forsaking their allegiance to the President of the United States in favor of serving under the United Nations and which asks about whether they would be willing to shoot civilians who would not submit to a government controlled ban on guns.
The Truth:
The survey does exist and was passed out to a few hundred Marines in 29 Palms, California, in 1995, but not by the Pentagon. According to an article in NEW AMERICAN magazine in October of 1995 by John F. McManus, the survey was part of an academic project on the part of a Navy Lieutenant Commander Ernest Guy Cunningham who was earning his Masters Degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The survey alarmed some of the Marines and copies soon started being circulated among gun rights supporters. Lt. Cmdr. Cunningham told McManus that he was a member of the National Rifle Association himself and didn’t agree with the tone of the questions. He said the survey was intended to confirm and then pass on to higher authorities his fears about “the lack of knowledge among the soldiers about the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and their heritage as Americans.”
updated 10/29/08