Unverifiable yet misleading

There's something I left out of the discussion about the claim that 40% of gun sales are done without a permit. That claim was not merely unverifiable, it was also misleading. It was misleading because the speaker was acting as if he had a solid source for the information. So this is a straight-up violation of Grice's second maxim of Quality. Grice's maxim of Quality ("Try to make your contribution one that is true") had two sub-maxims:

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

A cooperative dialogue participant will adhere to both of these maxims. The conversational implicature that people believe and have good evidence for what they say comes about through the assumption that people are being cooperative.

Saying that 40% of the gun sales are done without a permit is saying something for which you lack adequate evidence. It's a violation of Quality-2, as we say in the biz. So although the status of the claim is unverifiable, it is also misleading in the sense that it has a false implicature.

So I have to revise my shades of grey:

• Ambiguous (true on one interpretation, false on another*)
• Unverifiable (more research needed)
• presented as such
• carrying the false Quality-2 implicature of adequate evidence
• True but misleading (carrying a false implicature)

*I think I might have to add a category for "true on one interpretation, unverifiable on another", but I will do that in a separate step.