The Daily Caller is currently running an “urgent poll” on its website asking its readers if the United States should “sign on to the UN gun ban.”

There's just one problem: there is no “UN gun ban.” While the right-wing media and theNational Rifle Association have consistently fearmongered over a proposed UN Arms Trade Treaty, there is no evidence their dark claims will come to pass. In December, the Daily Caller launched a “Guns and Gear” section, featuring content and advertising largely provided by the NRA.

The treaty in question seeks to regulate international arms deals to prevent weapons trafficking to human rights violators; the U.N. General Assembly's resolution on the treaty makes clear that countries will “exclusively” maintain the authority within their borders to “regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership.” The goal of U.S. negotiators is get other countries to agree to follow import and export rules that the U.S. already has already instituted.

The Daily Caller promises to “share the poll results with major media outlets across the country,” but it's unlikely that such outlets would be interested with the results of an unscientific online poll that features a flagrantly inaccurate description of the proposed treaty. The more likely purpose of the exercise is likely to allow the Caller to harvest its readers' email addresses, the submission of which is required to see the poll's results.

In a press release announcing the launch of its Guns and Gear section, Caller publisher and CEO Neil Patel criticized the media as “hopelessly out of touch with American values and interests” for not providing news coverage to "[t]he millions of Americans who own and are interested in guns." But now it appears that the publication is happy to treat those millions as rubes, playing to their fears pushing gun lobby nonsense in order to get their email addresses.