Check this report out,

http://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Report-on-gun-related-suicides-and-crime-for-the-Australian-Parliament-Rev.pdf

Report to the Parliament of Australia on “The ability of
Australian law enforcement authorities to eliminate gun-related
violence in the community”

Conclusion
It is very hard to look at the raw data on firearm suicides and homicides and
see any benefits from the gun buyback. In 2004, the US National Research
Council released a report reaching this same conclusion (p. 95): “It is the
committee’s view that the theory underlying gun buy-back programs is
badly flawed and the empirical evidence demonstrates the ineffectiveness of
these programs.”18

Let's get one thing straight here. I did not miss your original point. Your original point that I disagree with is that you defended Snopes and the owners. You put them both on a pedestal. Then you backed down from that position in your next posting(s). That IS back peddling. I did not miss your point. You changed your point later. You added to it in your later posts in order to take them down from the pedestal YOU put them on. I understood exactly what your intent was at the time you first posted your defense of Snopes and the owners. If you want to back down from that, fine. Admit it and let's move on. I did not misunderstand. You misspoke. There is a huge difference here and you cannot deny (based on the timeline) that that is exactly what happened. It is all in black and white here. This is not a matter of your opinion against mine. It is a fact. But I know you will try and save face here and continue to back peddle. Or worse, just ignore what I am saying here because that is your usual MO.

I did not say admitting that one is imperfect is back peddling. What I said was that you are using the fact that they are imperfect to try and cover up your back peddling. What I said was they have intent. Because if what they publish on their website is a mistake then they could remove it at any time. The fact that they don't remove what you call a mistake is proof of intent that they want to deflect and back peddle and try to influence people to their way of thinking which just happens to have a liberal bent. Do not change my words nor my intent to try and deflect and back peddle here. You have been caught and the more you squirm the worse you look.

I understand completely what you are saying regarding your original point about Snopes. Yes, claim bias and they become not believable. That is why I made sure I chose my words carefully. I made sure I separated the political from the non political. I look at everything Snopes says with suspicion due to their bias. But you can usually pick out the truth from the BS. If they didn't have a liberal bent on some political issues I would not be so suspicious.

I think there are people everywhere in this world who just want to know that what is happening conforms to their way of thinking. And that is what politics is all about. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc. They all lie. But the fact is the MSNBC's, CNN's and the like lie much more often and only lie in a liberal context. Fox News in fact lies less than all the other stations. But with that said, does that mean we can trust them? NO!!!! The only way to understand an issue is to hear all sides of it and then make your mind up for yourself. Which is why I was very clear that I find Snopes to be not so accurate on political issues and mostly accurate on non political issues. I look at both sides of everything. BTW, I knew the MEME was not fully correct when it was posted. It was posted quite a while ago on one of my forums and I think it might have been sent to me in an e-mail. I fact check almost everything. It doesn't matter. The MEME is what it is. What matters to me is how Snopes handled it. And I believe in this case, by not fully reporting the facts that about Hillary and her being fired and by who and for what reason, detracts from the intent of what Snopes is supposed to be. Don't just disprove a MEME as incorrect. They also need to provide the truth about the subject of the MEME. We still need to know that Hillary was fired, why she was fired and by whom. That would provide a complete answer and dispel their liberal bias on this subject. JMHO

I said that there is reason to believe the owners are neutral and I gave examples. Admitting that they aren't 100% neutral does not mean I cannot maintain that they are generally neutral. I have not backpedaled. I never put them on the pedestal. I did put them above unsupported memes and a lot of other rubbish in the mass media, but I never made them out to be infallible.

I should apologize though for going off track. It was never my intention to defend Snopes. My only intention was to point out the lack of objectivity in the response. The lack of people actually digging into the topic instead of blindly accepting an unsupported meme over a Snopes piece that at least provided supporting sources, even if their reporting was less than quality journalism. I did not mean for this to become a Snopes credibility debate. Charges of bias are leveled as recklessly and as freely as charges of racism to the point that even a truly neutral organization will get called biased when they report facts that aren't friendly to one side or the other. That is what really irritates me.

DENY DENY DENY Sorry, but everyone else here sees what you refuse to. I guess your not as open minded as you think you are.

Yeah, we get that already. Do you really think any one here really cares?

Then something is clearly lost in translation. Not sure what to say. You apparently see my being technical and specific as back pedaling, I don't know how to reconcile this.

I would certainly hope so. I hold conservatives to a higher standard as a more fact based party

I would certainly hope so.

I hold conservatives to a higher standard as a more fact based party

Keep hoping. It seems you are the only one defending what Snopes had to say about this meme. There is always a danger when you make the decision to try and prove a meme wrong. If the meme contains content that the majority of users either believe or want to believe and you want to attack it, you are going to get irritated by the responses. It was actually kind of predictable. Meme's keep forums like this alive. And easily irritable people like you keep the forum lively. Just saying...

Maybe you shouldn't? You seem to think everyone's facts are either incorrect or not worthy of your acceptance. You ignore their facts and you argue from the opposite side with made up analogies/suppositions. Some not even close to being real world. Others quite possible. I think when it comes to holding someone to having the facts you might want to look at yourself first as I have not seen much in the way of facts from you over the months. Including this discussion. You know, the pot calling the kettle black comes to mind. If you are going to hold everyone here to a higher standard then maybe you should start with yourself. Because honestly, I have not seen it. JMHO 

Keep hoping. It seems you are the only one defending what Snopes had to say about this meme. There is always a danger when you make the decision to try and prove a meme wrong. If the meme contains content that the majority of users either believe or want to believe and you want to attack it, you are going to get irritated by the responses. It was actually kind of predictable. Meme's keep forums like this alive. And easily irritable people like you keep the forum lively. Just saying...

Maybe you shouldn't? You seem to think everyone's facts are either incorrect or not worthy of your acceptance. You ignore their facts and you argue from the opposite side with made up analogies/suppositions. Some not even close to being real world. Others quite possible. I think when it comes to holding someone to having the facts you might want to look at yourself first as I have not seen much in the way of facts from you over the months. Including this discussion. You know, the pot calling the kettle black comes to mind. If you are going to hold everyone here to a higher standard then maybe you should start with yourself. Because honestly, I have not seen it. JMHO 

It's been my long held opinion that the Liberals and Democrats are the ones with double standards for everything.  If a Republican is caught in a mis-statement, he lied!  Kick him out of office!  But when a favorite Democrat lies outright for the public to see, the Liberals scream, "But it's not as bad as what President so-and-so did, so they should be excused!"

Double standards are the hallmark of Democrats and social justice warriors.  Now that this guy freely admits he hold Conservatives to a higher standard, it's obvious to me which way he leans.

Anything I see from him from now own is ging to be taken in that light -- a Liberal troll who thinks high standards should only be for the Conservatives.  Is it because Liberals can't be expected to meet such standards, I wonder?

I suppose I cannot disagree with that sentiment, but I do value truth above that and I have come to distrust memes for how often I have been tricked into believing some falsehood by a made up or dishonest meme.

Aren't analogies by nature made up?

I have admitted myself to be wrong multiple times on this forum when facts later have shown I was wrong. We may arrive at different conclusions from the same set of facts but that doesn't mean I am ignoring facts.

I don't know how you can take such observations and arrive at such a completely opposite stance. I hold conservatives to a higher standard because as one I expect a higher standard. I expect that people who espouse conservative ideology hold true to the ideology. I like to think that the side I have chosen is the right one. Liberals are going to be liberals, out their two faced. Conservatives are better than that and I expect them to behave that way. If conservatives aren't the moral and fact based group then I have no reason to be a part of them and no reason to think they have a superior standing.

Holding them to a hire standard implies they are more upright, I don't know how you reason that it is some double standard. When we hold leaders to a higher standard are you saying you don't expect yourself to meet that standard? You expect a judge or police officer to be held to a higher standard given their position of power and importance, is that a double standard for yourself?

I don't know how you can take such observations and arrive at such a completely opposite stance. I hold conservatives to a higher standard because as one I expect a higher standard. I expect that people who espouse conservative ideology hold true to the ideology. I like to think that the side I have chosen is the right one. Liberals are going to be liberals, out their two faced. Conservatives are better than that and I expect them to behave that way. If conservatives aren't the moral and fact based group then I have no reason to be a part of them and no reason to think they have a superior standing.

Holding them to a hire standard implies they are more upright, I don't know how you reason that it is some double standard. When we hold leaders to a higher standard are you saying you don't expect yourself to meet that standard? You expect a judge or police officer to be held to a higher standard given their position of power and importance, is that a double standard for yourself?

Instead of debating whether you are a liberal or not, and how you go about assessing standards, why don't you actually SHOW the people on this forum why you should be a credible poster. I'm not saying you are not. But obviously in recent days, many people have voiced their opinions that your credibility (and agenda) here is in question.

DO, don't just SAY. SHOW, don't just TELL.

I also cannot tell whether or not many of your comments are attempts at distracting from the main discussion topics, or that they are valid tangentials.

You say you are moderate or conservative but almost everything you write here is liberal, under the banner of being "fair and balanced." You say you are pro-gun, but on almost every issue, you seem to be anti-liberty and pro-control, and you seem to liberally (pun intended) scatter assorted leftwing ideas here and there, while packaging them up as objective and neutral. Your positions disempower citizens, and empower state control. They are suspicious of people but generous with government.

Unlike some others, I am not accusing you of being a troll or a propaganda agent. But I am saying you need to take a look at what is going on because all this is feedback for you now.

Mahalo for listening.

I used to view Snopes as a relatively reputable source– a website devoted to putting rumors to rest. What a noble cause, right?

But lately,  Snopes has been giving off more of a failed left-wing blog kinda vibe.

Now it all makes sense.

As it turns out, one of Snopes’ main political fact-checkers is a self-described liberal named Kim LaCapria. Prior to working for Snopes, LaCapria worked at Inquisitr, a website widely known for publishing fake quotes and spreading hoaxes.

She described herself as “openly left-leaning” and a liberal. She trashed the Tea Party as “teahadists.” She called Bill Clinton “one of our greatest” presidents. She claimed that conservatives only criticized Lena Dunham’s comparison of voting to sex because they “fear female agency.”

She once said the Bush administration was “at least guilty of criminal negligence” for 9/11. Another time, she wrote about Lena Dunham’s controversial Obama ad and said she could imagine it “simultaneously enrage, freak out, disgust, horrify and frighten the party of legitimate rape.”

The Republican Party is the party of “legitimate rape.”   Snopes’ political fact-checker wrote that.

Maybe Snopes needs to clean house of some of its staff.

Would you care to revise any of your previous statements or arguments defending Snopes as unbiased?

I had never claimed Snopes to be completely free of bias, what I had done was show that there was reason to believe the creators of Snopes appeared neutral. What I hadn't given much thought to were that Snopes may have some writers who did not live up to the standard. Thus my comment that they should look to clean house to maintain their objectivity.