There’s a reason people become gun nuts—they’re paranoid, and they often wildly overestimate the dangers around them.

Witness a flood of letters, postcards, and emails from N.R.A. members recently received by U.N. officials. The letters are all protesting a non-existent U.N. plan to outlaw gun ownership in the United States on the Fourth of July. On the Fourth of July!! Those bastards!

In an undoubtedly very successful bid to sell lots of copies of his new book, “The Global War on Your Guns,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre has been urging the group’s members to write letters to the U.N. to express their opposition to this made-up plan.

He even made a website, complete with section headers like, “The Mastermind”, “The Conpsirators”, and “The Money Trail”. (Also, “Get the Book,” and “Book Signing Tour Dates.”)

The site has a nifty video intro, in which LaPierre opens with this shocker:

This July, at the same time Americans celebrate our precious freedoms, Kofi Annan will convene a meeting of dictatorships, terrorist states, and over 500 gun ban groups at the United Nations. Their mission? To pass a global treaty banning ownership of firearms, including yours.

He carefully doesn’t mention the actual date of this meeting of the global Fuck America Cabal, but the text on the site isn’t so restrained. As a nice little wink to how completely full of shit they are, the text makes generous use of the ellipsis.

This 4th of July, while you and your family celebrate the 230th Anniversary of the founding of our great nation, there’s one party you won’t be invited to…

…And that’s the party that Kofi Annan is throwing at United Nations headquarters in New York — using your tax dollars — for nearly fifty dictatorships, six terrorist states, governments that endorse execution based on religious faith, and a multitude of other nations from around the globe.

You see, this party isn’t to honor your freedoms — but to conspire to take them away. That’s right. Over our 4th of July holiday, while taps is played at Arlington National Cemetery to honor Americans who have sacrificed their lives for freedom…

…These dictatorships, terrorist states and so-called “freeâ€� nations of the world plan to meet on our home soil to finalize a U.N. treaty that would strip all citizens of all nations of their right to self-protection, and strip you of your rights under the Second Amendment.

Before one word falls from their lying lips about our country and our freedoms, I want them to hear from America’s 80 million gun owners and YOU.

Seriously, those ellipses are in the original. Check it out.

There are more than a couple things wrong with this insanity, most important among them that the U.N. is closed on the Fourth of July, and, oh, the meeting they’re describing is not about restricting the legal rights of citizens of sovereign nations to own guns,, as if they had the authority to do such a thing, but about cracking down on the global illegal trade in firearms.

Chairman of the U.N. conference on illegal (note!) small arms trade Prasad Kariyawasam addressed the issue:

“That is a total misconception as far as we are concerned,” Kariyawasam told reporters ahead of the two-week meeting opening on Monday.

… the U.N. conference will look only at illegal arms and “does not in any way address legal possession,” a matter left to national governments to regulate rather than the United Nations, he added.

“The U.N. conference will not negotiate any treaty to prohibit citizens of any country from possessing firearms or to interfere with the legal trade in small arms and light weapons.”

So stand down, you morons.