Gun scandal shoots Obama campaign in the foot

July 31, 2012 12:20


Now the disastrous Fast and Furious gun smuggling operation by the ATF makes sense. We were one of the first sites to accuse Holder and the Obama administration of using the operation as political cover for its anti-gun policies.

Fast and Furious allowed guns to go to Mexican drug cartels which have ended up being used in the murder of an American border patrol agent and hundreds of innocent Mexicans.
Breitbart.com uncovered a video from 1995 of then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder announcing a public campaign to “really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.

CBS reported in Feb. 2009 that Holder was reviving the idea of an “assault” weapons ban:

‘Responding to a reporter’s question on weapons’ regulations, Holder said, “Well, as President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”‘

Blue Steel Democrat reported that in 2007 then senator Obama responded to a question about his stance on gun rights:

Given the recent activity in Congress, it seemed an good time to ask Senator Barack Obama, the leading “unknown” Democratic presidential candidate, his position on 2nd Amendment rights. So I sent him an email on the subject yesterday. Posted here is his reply.

I recommend you write him on this issue.

Obama‘s response on the 2nd Amdendment:

“Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting me about gun laws and the Second Amendment. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue. Americans broadly agree that guns must be kept from those who may pose a threat, and that the rights of legitimate hunters and sportsmen should be protected.

We must work to ensure that guns do not fall into the hands of criminals or the mentally ill through an effective background check system. We also have to strike a reasonable balance between public safety and sportsmen’s rights.

I will continue to work for effective gun laws, including reinstatement of the assault weapons ban that the last Congress allowed to expire, and effective law enforcement. I will also speak out against the culture of violence that traps so many of our young people.

Thank you again for contacting me on this important issue.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama” [emphasis added]

The supposed goal of the operation was to track the guns in Mexico to the bigger fish. But does that make sense? Russ Vaughn writing at American Thinker points out the fallacy in that argument:

Here we had an operation mounted by the executive branch of the United States, an operation which had as its stated goal — after being outed, that is — the targeting of Mexican drug lords on sovereign Mexican soil.  Yet this was done without the knowledge of anyone in the Mexican government.  Quite clearly, a secret and subversive operation had been conceived and implemented against our sister nation to the south — subversive because, again, quite clearly, the American government was subverting the sovereign authority of Mexico without that nation’s knowledge.  If the goal was, as stated later by DoJ, to track guns into Mexico to the purchasing sources in the cartels, then was there not some diplomatic requirement to notify  the Mexican government that we were arming their most violent criminal elements?  And what was the need for keeping our own BATF agents in Mexico — the only American agents with Mexican presence to conduct such surveillance and tracking operations on Mexican soil — equally in the dark?

The Obama administration deliberately allowed guns to go to Mexican drug cartels so that it could make the claim that a gun ban is needed in the US. The political operation turned disastrous when those guns also showed up in the murder of a U.S. border Patrol agent and other crimes in the U.S. Hundreds of Mexican citizens have died and much more violence will happen with the weapons still at large.

Early in their first term, Obama, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and various other anti-gun Democrats claimed 90% of the weapons used by Mexican drug cartels were American and therefore stricter gun laws were needed to stem the violence. This myth spread through the liberal media that loves stories that blame guns.

STRATFOR Global Intelligence showed the numbers behind the myth:

According to the report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican officials in 2008. Out of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them, (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.

This means that the 87 percent figure comes from the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by the Mexicans or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. The 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing.

Since the allegations of American weapons being the primary source of guns for the cartels proved false, Obama, Holder et al. needed more American guns to be used in the Mexican violence to justify executive order gun bans. They knew more restrictive gun laws would not get through congress even when Democrats had majorities in both the senate and the house.

IBD reported about an email showing that the program was being used to support gun control efforts:

On July 14, 2010, roughly five months before Agent Terry’s murder, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix special agent in charge of Fast and Furious. “Bill,” the email read, “can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time? We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun sales. Thanks.” [emphasis added]

 

The ends justifies the means. It’s the Alinsky way. And apparently it’s the Holder and Obama way too.

 

We’ve been reporting about this scandal for over a year. Talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are also now waking up to the scandal with extensive reports yesterday. I guess it takes a congressional contempt citation to make some people realize how despicable this administration can be.

 

See more Fast and Furious gun scandal videos on our You Tube playlist

 

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