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It’s no coincidence that NBC’s Rachel Maddow and The Comedy Channel’s Jon Stewart have pilloried the NRA in recent shows. They’ve been “inspired” by the ATF’s mounting Gunwalker scandal. Congressional investigators have established a connection between the “Guns for Goons” program and the White House. The President continues to stonewall; his Counsel has evoked Executive Privilege. As the repulsive facts about the federal conspiracy to commit murder continue to emerge, the left is launching a simple counter-attack: why would he do that? Where’s the President’s anti-gun agenda? It’s a good question . . .
The left-leaning commentator and comedian are correct: President Obama has not grabbed guns. There has been no major federal gun control initiative since Obama assumed office. If the President was going to champion gun control in any form, he would have done so after Jared Lee Loughner’s attack on Representative Gabriel Giffords. He could have thrown his weight behind a move to ban “high-capacity” magazines. But he didn’t.
For whatever reason—practical politics or personal conviction—the current President is not, by his actions at least, anti-gun. It’s also true that the National Rifle Association’s strident attacks on the President have not reflected reality. The sound bites used by the left’s media mouthpieces are not taken out of context. When it comes to Wayne LaPierre’s anti-Obama rhetoric, it is what it isn’t.
That said, it is theoretically possible that a re-elected President Obama, freed from political necessity, could launch an attack on gun rights. He certainly has some “history” in that regard; most notably the Commander-in-Chief’s past association with the virulently anti-gun Joyce Foundation. But the chances of any such initiative making it through an increasingly conservative-minded legislature are somewhere between none and none.
Which bring us to the key piece of evidence supporting the “Gunwalker as gun grabbing” meme: the ATF’s new long gun registry regulation. This reg requires some 8500 border-dwelling gun stores to report multiple sales of semi-automatic rifles within 24 hours of the deal, to provide investigative leads for the ATF so they can stop the “Iron River” or guns flowing to Mexican drug cartels.
In the light of Operation Fast and Furious, during which the ATF created an “Iron River” of guns flowing to Mexican drug cartels, the long gun registry would be better termed a “long gun travesty.” The ATF’s regulatory chutzpah is currently held up in court. Meanwhile, it serves as exhibit A that the President’s launching “under the radar” gun control initiatives.
Yes, well, the “under the radar” remark was reported by reps for The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence at a failed, post-Loughner spree killing “gun summit.” We don’t know if Obama actually made the promise, or if he was serious if he did.
In any case, the long gun registry is a singular move. There is nothing else in Obama’s presidential record or waiting in the West Wing (as far as we know) on the gun control front. Meanwhile . . .
Click on the link to Maddow’s misegos and skip to 3:03. There’s the expected disinformation: her hurried remark that 2000 guns were loose on the streets “for a time” (in fact over 1000 ATF-enabled firearms are still out there, somewhere). And then Maddow takes on Mike Vanderboegh of the Sipsey Street Irregulars.
Maddow does the flashback thing to recall the gun blogger’s exhortation to break Democratic reps’ and operatives’ windows, which included not-so-veiled threats of firearms-based violence . . . More importantly, Maddow dismisses Mike’s “Fast and Furious as gun grabbing conspiracy” with a simple wave of her hand.
And that’s because the explanation lacks credibility. It may be true. On its own, the ATF has enough anti-gun rights animus to cook-up any number of [allegedly] well-intentioned non-legislative schemes to limit Americans’ access to guns (e.g., the new long gun registry).
Mind you, pimping for money and power by inflating Mexican confiscation stats on American guns by letting American guns go to Mexico sounds implausible. Why not just manipulate the stats (again)?
The new long gun registry is equally fantastic. Let guns walk to stop guns walking and record multiple gun purchases to help us generate leads to gunwalkers that we might let walk guns? Uh, OK.
But again, there’s a bigger picture here. A landscape of U.S. foreign policy disaster in which ATF operations Fast and Furious, Wide Receiver, Castaway and Grenadewalker occurred. foxnews.com:
Five years after President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against Mexico’s five main drug cartels, the nation is now dominated by two powerful organizations that appear poised for a one-on-one battle to control drug markets and trafficking routes . . .
Mexican federal authorities, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told The Associated Press that the Zeta and Sinaloa cartels are now the nation’s two dominant drug traffickers. One or the other is present almost everywhere in Mexico, but officials are braced to see what happens next in a drug war that has already claimed an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 lives. So far, the signs are not hopeful.
What happens next is what’s happening now and what was happening when Fast and Furious was aborn: the two cartels will fight with mind-bending brutality to grab the tens of billions of dollars in tax-free cash money flowing from the U.S. to Mexico. The most important aspect of this struggle as it relates to Gunwalker: the American government has a skin in the game.
The Mexican government is closely “allied” to the Sinaloa cartel against Los Zetas. With U.S. help, the Mexican military (most lately Navy Spec Ops) are focusing all their anti-cartel efforts on Los Zetas, who threaten to “disrupt” (as in stage a military coup) in the 2012 elections. I repeat, with U.S. help: money, training, arms, ammunition, drone- and satellite-based intel, planning, coordination and even American air bases.
All the ATF’s various gun smuggling black bag jobs delivered weapons to Sinaloas and/or their friends, both here and in Honduras. The ATF coordinated logistics with an alphabet soup of federal agencies. Were they all motivated/directed by the White House to increase public pressure for stricter U.S. gun control or did the ops having something more to do with what it said at the top of the authorization forms: Mexican narco-terrorists?
That is a can of worms with which the left cannot deal. Gun-grabbing paranoia? Thanks to the NRA’s reliance on scare tactics to fill their coffers, left-leaning media pros can shoot down anti-2a analysis more easily than a Zeta can take down a helicopter with a U.S. made .50 cal (and yes, they have tried). Obama administration logistical support for and (it must be said) against narco-terrorists? Good luck with that.
I don’t know if the Gunwalker narrative will shift from anti-gun rights analysis to an expose of our role in the conflagration of violence, terror and political upheaval south of the border; the stomach-turning civil war that threatens to vomit millions of Mexican refugees across our border. That may depend on one thing: the facts.
Follow the money? No. Follow the guns. Oh, and grenades.
I think we’re all asking, “Why would he do that?” Hopefully, Issa and Co. will have some answers someday – the public is getting impatient.
At this point, I suspect that this has become political (isn’t everything?). If they take Obama down now (I’ve read on other sites where Issa/Grassley already have enough to do it), there is plenty of time for the Dems to mount a 2012 campaign with a possibly strong contender (Hillary, anyone?). In fact, if they take Obama down at any time, it won’t go over well with a lot of left-leaning folks. On the other hand, if Issa/Grassley stall long enough, at the rate things are going, this administration will be history in 2012 on its own lack of merit – perhaps then, the truth will come out?
What makes the gov’t narrative that the weapons were allowed to “walk” in order to track down Mexican drug traffickers so disingenuous is that the gov’t already KNOWS who the drug traffickers are, and likely WHERE they are. For Pete’s sake, one of their wives gave birth to twins in L.A. last week. This is not the law enforcement equivalent of trying to figure out where some kids are getting their dime bags from. Whether this was an end-run around the 2nd A. or a way to make nice with one of the contenders in a Mexican civil war, or a little of both, will hopefully be made clear.
The president has always been anti-gun-it just isn’t smart for him to be out front about it in his first(hopefully only)term.
We saw the truth for a second or so when Holder was confirmed and the first thing out of his rodent mouth was some crap about a new assault weapons ban.That got squelched quickly.
Obama is too politically savvy to take on a politically volatile issue llike guns while he’s
enmeshed in the health care,”green”fraud,and spending/borrowing debates.
There’s no potential return in the gun issue for him right now.
The anti gun scum like Feinstein,Boxer,Schumer,Hillary,etc are similar to bacteria in spore form-waiting for the right conditions to emerge and re-infect the country.
Once a gun grabber,always a gun grabber.
Here’s Obama’s answer to the current state of play from examiner.com:
MR. SIADE: Mr. President, this question comes from Karina in Ohio: Mr. President, what is your strategy to stop the flow of weapons bought with drug money in the U.S. and then sent to Mexico, especially after what happened in Operation Fast and Furious?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, this is a great challenge, and I’ve been the first one to admit — I’ve said this publicly in bilateral meetings with President Calderón that there’s a two-way street in terms of the problems of transnational drug operations. The Mexican government I think has been very courageous in taking on these cartels, at great cost, obviously, with respect to violence in Mexico. That’s the right thing to do.
We have to be a more effective partner in both reducing demand for drugs here in the United States and for stemming the flow of weapons and cash that help to finance and facilitate these cartels. So we’re working very hard to have a much more effective interdiction effort of south to north — or north to south traffic than we have in the past, so we are checking southbound transit to try to capture illegal guns, illegal cash transfers to drug cartels. It is something that we have been building over the last couple of years; it’s not yet finished.
And there’s going to be more work to do.
Part of the issue here, obviously, is budgetary. At a time when the federal government is looking for ways to save money, we’re going to have to figure out ways to operate smarter and more effective in our investigations without a huge expansion of resources because those resources aren’t there.
Robert, I think your obsession with the gunwalker sandal has poisoned your mind. You’re seeing it everywhere.
My impression was that these silly remarks of La Pierre’s were crying out for mockery, nothing more. In fact that speech was one of his worst for bizarre allegations of conspiracy against gun owners.
His true motivations are not too difficult to guess.
Did you watch the part of Maddow’s rant that dealt with Fast and Furious? That was something of a tip-off that it had something to do with Fast and Furious. As for Stewart, I can’t imagine that such an astute political observer is unaware of F&F, although he somehow forgets to mention it on his program.
Mikey said: I think your obsession with the gunwalker sandal has poisoned your mind
The Gunwalker sandal? I’ll take two pair. And can I get an AK with those?
that’s funny. Thanks for not doing the [sic] thing. I hate that one.
No, Obama has not specifically grabbed any guns. And his supporters repeatedly point out how he has not raised anyone’s taxes. But all it takes from a President is rhetoric and his rhetoric continues to paralyze the nation, economically.
Anyone with money is clinging to it with a death grip. We are convinced that Obama wants our money and that he feels he has a legitimate claim to it. Everything he says alludes to that. He is a Marxist, pure and simple.
It’s the same with guns and ammo sales. Tyranny is great for business when you’re a merchant of liberty.
There is of course the ‘hidden-tax’. It is the joint policy of the USG working with the private banking cartel the Federal Reserve in the practice of Liquidity Easing. One of the effects of LE are accumulating huge long term national debts (trillion$) that will eventually have to be repaid with far higher taxes. Another effect is the ongoing current debasing of our currency. The Federal Reserve Note (it’s the FRN since we don’t have US Dollars) buying power is being destroyed by the actions of the vast arbitrary “printing of money” not tied to any standard, too easy credit, and loans from foreign governments, etc. All this and other measures causes the overall price of goods to increase. Cost of goods may not matter to the super-rich yet the middle and poorer classes increasingly feel it. Obama and Washington’s overall marxist-fascist economic political goals are bleeding away the economic vitality of this country. We’ve already gone mostly from a free-market capitalist system to one that includes some aspects of merchantilism and corporatism (fascism).
Personally, I don’t put all the blame on Obama as I find him just the latest incarnation continuing a line of immoral leaders now going back decades.
Today, there is an article (haven’t read it) at MSNBC: Perry suggests US military role in Mexico drug war
“It may take our military” working with the Mexican government to win Mexico’s drug war, he said.
Say hello to the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Exactly. The only thing that will stop the drug war is legalization. Did we learn nothing from Prohibition?
As best, we learned nothing from Prohibition. At worst, the drug issue is being exploited by our governments for their own ends. My guess — it’s the latter.
Well, he didn’t actually say that our military would be fighting in Mexico. The few times we did that, we ended up taking Texas and California. I’m okay with Texas, but I’d just as soon give Cali back.
When all the Left has left is Rachael Maddow and John Stuart (BTW, shouldn’t they both be on the Comedy Channel?), they’ve already lost the argument. Surely, only a comedian could deny what’s going on with F&F and the God Emperor in the White House.
Somebody please tell Chris Matthews that the tingling sensation running down his leg means it’s time to change his Depends.
I’m hoping that the new Wall Street protests, that just resulted in 700 people being (aggressively?) arrested, becomes our own American Spring during next year’s election cycle. If the economy tanks as well with jobs and money running out to support hungry people it could make for an interesting year. I think I’m going to buy that Henry Frontier model .22 with the 20″ octagon barrels should I need to hunt rabbits for dinner. There are lots of cotton tails running around Oregon. Anyone have a good rabbit recipe?
I’m going to use a Mosin Nagant 91/30 for all my rabbit hunting. I understand that shredded rabbit is delicious and, with the 7.62X54R, not very labor intensive.
Now thats an idea. For larger game, some are suggesting going with a flame thrower since it will kill and cook your meat at the same moment. The trick is to figure out how to put the right amount of wild game spices into the gasoline mixture so you don’t have to bother spicing up your food later on.
This looks like a job for my patented
“Rapid Repeating Rabbit Roaster Cannon”*
1st shot is Propane/oxygen to stun
2nd shot is a longer version of 1st (to remove fur)
3rd is like the 1st, but with a savory mix of spices suspended in delicious bacon grease.
And finally, a long blast of propane to cook (165 deg. internal temp.)
*Caution: Some lawn damage may occur.
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