The U.S. Government Purchased 30,000 Guillotines-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
The U.S. government recently purchased 30,000 guillotines after receiving congressional approval in 2013.
The Truth:
Claims that the U.S. government has purchased thousands of guillotines have been around since at least 1994, but there’s not proof to back them up.
The idea that the U.S. government had a secret stockpile of guillotines appeared in the 1994 book, “The Breaking Dead and Cement Children,” by Gyeorgos C. Hatonn. In the book, Hatonn references guillotines while arguing that Bo Gritz, a white separatist and former presidential candidate, was a secret government informant:
Bo Gritz has been strongly denying to the people he leads that “there is not such thing as black, unmarked helicopters, UN troops, handcuffs, shackles and guillotines, or concentration camps.” These things do exist, a great deal of witnesses have reported these things.
Bo Gritz denies in his newsletter that he is a CIA agent. Linda Thompson and Bill Cooper, who are to people exposing the NOW, both claim to have proof that he is a CIA agent. I don’t know that that is any secret. I heard Bo say on a radio interview here in Portland, “I am an intelligence agent.”
So, claims that the U.S. government has secret concentration camps (also known as FEMA camps) stocked with guillotines have been around for years, even though there isn’t any hard evidence to back them up.
The website Sharia Unveiled picked up the claim in 2013 and reported that the government had “recently” stockpiled 30,000 guillotines. Again, the report cites unnamed sources, bills that never became law and bills that don’t exist to make the case.
The website claims that U.S. Congress had approved the use of guillotines for “government purposes,” but there’s no such law on the books. In 1996, the Georgia House of Representatives approved House Bill 1274, which would have let prisoners on death row elect to die by guillotine — but it never became a law. The Georgia Senate never took up the bill, and it died.
Besides, the stated purpose of the state bill wasn’t to execute people in federal FEMA camps. It would have allowed death row inmates who wanted to donate their organs to do so:
(A bill) to amend Article 2 of Chapter 10 of Title 17 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to the death penalty generally, so as to provide a statement of legislative policy; to provide for death by guillotine; to provide for applicability; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.
The General Assembly finds that while prisoners condemned to death may wish to donate one or more of their organs for transplant, any such desire is thwarted by the fact that electrocution makes all such organs unsuitable for transplant. The intent of the General Assembly in enacting this legislation is to provide for a method of execution which is compatible with the donation of organs by a condemned prisoner.
Sharia Unveiled also claimed that the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act is proof that the government has established FEMA prison camps where people will be executed by guillotine — but that bill never became law, either. It was referred to committee in 2013 and no action has been taken since.
Claims that the government has purchased 30,000 guillotines and will use them in FEMA camps are false. The eRumor cites so-called first hand accounts, bills that don’t exist or never became law, and unnamed sources that can’t be verified — so there’s no reason to believe they’re true.