HALTING U.S. FIREARMS TAFFIC TO MEXICO. All caps. All bullshit. Including a piss-ant photo of confiscated firearms provided to Senator Feinstein’s office by the Mexican Secretariat of Public Security. Click here for the report released today by Senators Feinstein, Schumer and Whitehouse, in advance of Congressional hearings on the complete and utter f up that was the ATF’s Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious. As the Brits would say, the gun grabbers start as they mean to finish . . .

Military-style weapons are arming Mexico’s brutal drug trafficking organizations at an alarming rate. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has consistently found that the overwhelming majority of firearms recovered at crime scenes and traced by the Mexican officials originate in the United States. Specifically, from U.S. military sales to the Mexican government.

Just kidding about that last sentence. The report is just as bad as you’d imagine—providing you’ve been following the ATF’s BS from the git-go. The report puts the blame for the Mexican carnage on . . . wait for it . . . lax U.S. gun laws.

Yes, tens of thousands of Mexicans are dead, tortured and injured, an entire country has sunk into lawlessness and violence because of America’s “gun show loophole,” its laissez-faire policy on imported assault weapons, the lack of an assault weapons ban, the lack of a federal long gun registry and the lack of funding for the ATF. I shit you not. In terms of justification, the report recycles the same old misleading misegos. Such as . . .

Do we really have to do this again? Really? Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know that the Mexican-sourced ATF trace data only represents guns submitted to the ATF trace, NOT THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF SEIZED GUNS? In case you missed it, the ATF traced a large number of these guns at least twice. And the average age of the guns traced was more than ten years.

And know this, again, still: the weapon of choice for the Mexican drug cartels are brand-spanking new fully automatic AK-47s and Bushmaster AR-15s. You can’t just stroll into an American gun store and walk out with a fully automatic rifle. By the same token, you won’t find grenades and grenade launchers at Bob’s gun store or the Houston Gun Show.

Oh, and the ATF is directly responsible for allowing THOUSANDS of American guns walk into Mexico. But don’t worry, because Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious were a success! Again, no excremental tom-foolery involved . . .

Since it began in 2006, Project Gunrunner has had notable success.  The ATF has seized in excess of 10,000 firearms and 1.1 million rounds of ammunition destined for the Southwest border.  It has also conducted 11,745 firearms licensee compliance inspections.  As a result of Project Gunrunner investigations, 809 defendants are serving an average of 104 months in prison and an additional 260 are under court supervision.

I swear I’m going to hurl. The fact that the ATF inspected gun stores makes their interdiction efforts a success? Do they count the gun stores that they told to allow illegal purchases, knowing the weapons were headed to Mexico? Is conflating defendants with convictions to misdirect the public from investigating a program that armed people who shot an American Border Patrol Agent even legal?

I havent read a lot of Congressional reports. But this . . . this . . . this is the most cynical and crass borderline EVIL propaganda effort these 51-year-old eyes have ever scanned. These politicians’ efforts to shore-up the ATF make me ashamed to be Jewish and ashamed to be a Rhode Islander (Sheldon).

Well not quite. As the son of a Holocaust survivor who grew up in the first state to declare its independence from England, I realize that the lies of those who defend my enemies cannot withstand the zeal of those who value the truth. With a bit of luck, the Congressional investigation will be a reckoning day for the ATF, and those who support it.

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9 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting. The frontispiece photo includes a number of weapons that are not generally available in US gun stores and gun shows, possession of which without very difficult and rare federal permits is already unlawful under the National Firearms Act of 1934.

    This includes 2 M203 grenade launchers, 1 14.5″ M4 or M4A1 carbine (probably sourced from the Mexican military), a sawn-off shotgun, and an H&K MP5 submachine gun. Mere possession of any of those weapons without prior ATF approval in the USA is a ten-year felony already.

    Since many of those weapons probably came to the cartels through their controlled sources in the Mexican military and police, one wonders if giving the legendarily corrupt Mexicans more access to US law enforcement and intelligence databases is really a good idea. We don’t let the Pakistanis into JWICS or Intelink, even though more Pakistanis have died fighting the Taliban than Americans and all of NATO combined. Because despite the valor of come Pakistanis, their institutions are compromised by the enemy. The same is true in Mexico.

    But of course, the ATF is not about enforcing laws, but about growing itself like any bureaucracy, even if that means breaking those same laws. And the Congressional “gun control” caucus isn’t interested in guns so much as it is interested in control.

    It was modestly encouraging that only three of the most extreme hoplophobes in the Senate signed this thing, although it’s possible that Lautenberg is too sick or out of it.

  2. This situation like all those in government is all about the Benjamins. The war on drugs makes money for the Cartels and the police departments who fight them. Without the drugs, guns, prostitutes. ……..etc. There would not be as great a need for large prisons or the even larger funding for the running of those facilities. As sure as gravity exists politicians have a monetary interest in not really fixing any problem. Nicotine patches for free, laws to ban smoking in public places yet the tobacco industry can sell their wares legally albeit as long as Uncle Sam can tax the hell out of it.

  4. “By the same token, you won’t find grenades and grenade launchers at Bob’s gun store or the Houston Gun Show.”

    No, not that I could, but I did pick up a couple of “flash-bangs” at the Houston Gun Show last weekend. (LOL)

  5. “You cannot buy a fully automatic rifle in an American gun store.”

    Uh oh, better check your Form 4 facts, Amigo.

  6. In October 2010, the ATF said many guns used by Mexican cartels are bought in the United States, with Arizona and Texas being major sources, but it no longer releases estimates of how many because the numbers have become too politicized.

    “It doesn’t matter if 20 percent are coming from the U.S. or 80 percent,” Melson said. “We know a lot of guns are going to Mexico and it’s a problem.”

    Too politicized? Right. Unless your name is Senator Feinstein, Schumer and Whitehouse….., then it’s ok to release more false statistics!

    Repeat the lie!

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