courtesy twitter.com

As reader Tom S. writes, when you utterly suck and you’re furiously trying to remain relevant, it’s a good tactic to claim victory even when you’ve done nothing at all. In fact, it was the NRA’s non-opposition to Todd Jones that led to his confirmation as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (and Really Big Fires). God knows what deal the NRA cut to let Jones through but I hope it was a good one. As acting Director, Jones did sweet FA to investigate and remove the agents responsible for Operation Fast and Furious; a black bag job that facilitated the transfer of over 2000 gun store guns to Mexican drug thugs. (One of which was used to murder U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.) As Senator Grassley’s January press release points out [bullet points after the jump], Jones stood four-square in the way of transparency and accountability—to the point where he publicly threatened F&F whistleblowers. And yet, there he is: Gun Control Advocates’ Jackboot-in-Chief. Again, I hope it was worth it . . .

  • Failure to hold all the ATF personnel responsible for Operation Fast and Furious accountable – Nearly two years have gone by since the congressional investigation began.  Still, several key individuals identified by both Congress and the Inspector General as having played prominent roles in using reckless tactics remain with the agency.
  • Failure to support Fast and Furious whistleblowers – The Congressional investigation, the independent Department of Justice Inspector General, and an internal ATF review during Jones’ tenure exonerated the Fast and Furious whistleblowers.  Yet, Jones has never commended or publicly defended these agents who brought the wrongdoing in Operation Fast and Furious to light.  These whistleblowers faced retaliation from both inside and outside the Department of Justice, but Jones has steadfastly declined to recognize their heroic efforts to stop ATF gunwalking.
  • Perceived hostility to ATF whistleblowers – In a video sent agency wide, Jones instructed ATF employees not to complain about problems outside their chain of command.  ATF released the video as Fast and Furious remained prominently in the news.  Agents within ATF were concerned enough to contact Congress about what they perceived to be a veiled threat and indirect criticism of Fast and Furious whistleblowers who spoke to Congress and reporters about gunwalking after complaints to ATF officials had fallen on deaf ears.
  • Affording special treatment to ATF supervisor cited for negligence in Fast and Furious – In a particularly outrageous series of events, one of the key players in Operation Fast and Furious accepted a lucrative job at J. P. Morgan while still on ATF’s payroll.  While the agency had no obligation to do so, the supervisor was given a special waiver under Jones’ tenure as Acting Director to remain employed by ATF while he simultaneously worked for J.P. Morgan.  This was apparently done so that the agent could gain seniority for his government pension.
  • An unwillingness to engage Congress – Jones has refused to discuss his actions and problems within his agency related to Operation Fast and Furious with congressional investigators.  This position stands in stark contrast to his predecessor, former Acting ATF Director Ken Melson, whoproactively sought an opportunity to tell investigators his understanding of what had gone wrong in Operation Fast and Furious and with the Justice Department’s flawed response to whistleblower allegations.
  • Failure to apply lessons ATF has learned from Fast and Furious – Jones has, to date, exhibited a general failure to articulate to Congress, ATF agents, and the public his understanding of what went wrong, who is responsible, and what ATF needs to do in the future to be successful in its mission of enforcing firearms laws.  He has not offered plans for reforming or restructuring the failed supervisory framework that allowed reckless tactics to continue for over a year and contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent and numerous Mexican citizens.

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42 COMMENTS

  1. They gotta take em where they can get em. MAIG is almost a pariah now. Just being associated with it brings with it the baggage that is furor Bloomber. They are flopping around right now making noise, but its up to the voters now to show what we think of “elites” telling us whats best for us in the next election.

  2. I suspect the NRA figured it was easier to lay blame for future ATF phuck-ups at the feet of a permanent director rather than someone living out a suitcase at the Pentagon Ritz-Carlton who can argue that without the “permanent” title, he was powerless to make real changes. . . . . .

    This may be a good move. Now B. Todd Jones has to respond to congress. . . and it is an election year coming up.

    • He’ll respond to congress the same way Holder et al do, with a raised
      middle finger and a hearty “screw you”.

      • Ah, the ole “contempt of impotent Congress” ploy. Foiling a Congressional subpoena by not answering the phone while a raid occurs due to a baby deer which is to be remanded to a rehabilitator shortly thereafter.

        • Considering Holder actually was ruled to be in contempt but so far
          the DOJ has ignored orders to prosecute him. Add to that refusals
          to answer, much less cooperate, by other agencies such as the
          EPA, IRS and NLRB with little to no repercussions. I’d say these
          make a fairly good argument that congress is “impotent”.
          How much is willful is another matter.

          The baby deer was euthanized btw.

        • Question. Couldn’t Congress appoint a special prosecutor and/or impeach Holder? I suppose impeachment could flop, as the Senate must convict and it wouldn’t. But maybe he would resign rather than face the ignominy of impeachment? Heck it is even rarer than presidential impeachment….only one cabinet secretary has ever been impeached.

      • The situation in which we find ourselves, viz. a criminal US AG and a criminal President who protect one another, is deeply problematic. I’m no constitutional scholar, but this seems to be a serious flaw in the system of checks and balances.

        • The system of checks and balances was abandoned during the Bush administration. See Operation Iraqui Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, etc.

    • Another like minded Democratic grabber disciple for Obama. This Administration will have Jones employ ATF regulatory means wherever possible to tighten the screws any way it can on gun owners and purveyors all the while feigning ignorance as to what is going on.

      • Its inevitable, they want a civil war. You know what, the only way this mess gets fixed is what they are trying to bring. Let’s just get it over with and fix the problem.

  3. By the way, I am sure no one noticed, but Obama nominated Steven Croley to be the General Counsel of the Dept. of Energy. Croley is on leave from U of M Law school, is married to a Michigan Supreme Court Justice (who was selected b/c another democrat committed fraud and is going to federal prison), and most recently, while working the white house, was the one directing Obama’s anti-gun efforts.

    http://www.law.com/corporatecounsel/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202613617742&kw=Obama%20Picks%20Homeland%20Security%2C%20Energy%2C%20and%20NLRB%20GCs&et=editorial&bu=Corporate%20Counsel&cn=20130802&src=EMC-Email&pt=Afternoon%20Update&slreturn=20130705101920

    This may be good news in that either Obama is giving up his anti-gun agenda for the time being (mid-term 2014 elections) or . . . . he is looking for a new sucker to take the lead.

    http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/04/daniel-zimmerman/meet-steven-croley-president-obamas-gun-czar/

  5. ” Jones did sweet FA to investigate and remove the agents responsible”

    What is “sweet FA” ?. I don’t understand the jargon.

  6. “YAY! YIPPEE!! We got another criminal thug in office.” as stated by Demand Action to End Gun Violence. Simply amazing.

  7. NRA may have figured the devil they knew was better than the one they didn’t. I’m not aware of anyone thinking Jones is particularly cunning and the NRA may have been worried the next guy would have been.

  8. Victory? I guess if they want to call it that.

    Reminds me of projects that take a year longer than expected and three times the budget. That’s a failure by any objective measure but they still throw a big celebration like they just won the Superbowl.

    Good luck on your “victory”. 7 years to nominate someone to that post sounds like a win for the NRA to me.

  9. So how “in the news” is MAIG go to be able to be when the angry dwarf is no longer in office in a few months, since he’s the face of the organization?

    What I mean is, he gives speeches all the time now, but many if not most of those speeches are only in his realm of opportunity because he’s the mayor of NYC, and he shoehorns his anti-gun agit-prop into them. Once he’s no longer mayor, how much will his ability to grandstand decline, and by extension, how will that cause MAIG’s star to shine a little less brightly?

    He can still give speeches, but will anyone listen or care when he’s an ex-?

    • He will still do what he does now. He has too big of an ego to stop. What I will enjoy is that he won’t be able to use the NYPD as his personal security force and will have to pay for security out of his pocket instead of using taxpayer money.

  10. Well, while he’s busy not doing anything regarding F&F, perhaps he has some free time to hire more NFA people.

    What? A guy can dream.

  11. It’s pretty clear that there are no consequences of any kind for Sultan Barack Hussein Obama or his cronies, so why on earth would we let him appoint anyone else to ANY other post?

    Letting Jones through is a mistake, as egregious as allowing Eric Holder to be Attorney General.

  12. Gabby Giffords beat MAIG to the punch. On 7/31 Americans For Responsible Solutions sent out the email included below.

    They used the term Gun Lobby instead of NRA. I guess they didn’t read the recent marketing and messaging playbook. Of cource at the end of the email there was a nice big CONTRIBUTE button.

    Dear –

    For the first time in seven years, the agency tasked with enforcing our nation’s gun laws — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) — will have a Director leading the organization.

    It’s a tremendous victory for our movement, and it wouldn’t have been possible without you standing up and making your voice heard.

    How do I know that to be true? Because for the past seven years the gun lobby has cowed Congress into blocking nomination after nomination to the post — all part of their decades long effort to systematically erode law enforcement’s ability to keep our communities safe from gun violence.

    But today, we took a giant step forward, and our communities will be safer because of the confirmation of Acting Director and U.S. Marine Todd Jones.

    Join us in congratulating Director Jones and send your message of support on our website. We’ll share them with him next week.

    http://action.americansforresponsiblesolutions.org/director-jones

    During all of my recent visits to Capitol Hill, a constant excuse I heard from the senators opposed to common-sense solutions was that we need to enforce the laws on the books before creating new ones.

    Now that we have a Director on the job, let’s get back to passing background checks.

    All the best,

    Gabby Giffords

    • As the old saying goes, “Success has many fathers. . .”

      It also appears to have an extremely flexible definition.

    • Wait, what?

      So get to enforcing the laws already on the books was not an Excuse, it was a reason.

      So how does having a ATF DIRECTOR make congress pass more laws they won’t still enforce?

      Bigger issue IS the multi-unconstitutional of “Why” BCG checks shouldn’t be broadened yet redefined is ,obviously, because it has a rate of inacuracy of nearly 50% false accuracy when a “Fail” response is given.

      In 2010 around 80k “Fails” were logged. About 40k of them were prior felons. Of those only 40 were prosecuted and only 8 were convicted.

      Now, on the flip side of that coin, that means that another 40k individuals were denied their constitutional right to purchase a firearm!

      That is unacceptable in my reading that clearly states “, Shall NOT be Infringed.”

      If that isn’t a direct infringement then I don’t know what is.

      If it went from just FFL’s to everyone, that number would probably triple.

      With over 1.5million BCG’s being performed in Jan. & Feb. consecutively, and lets give a fail ratio of even 10% that could be over 150k individuals. Now if private sales were equal, & the error remained the same, that would then be 300k false “Fails”, per MONTH!

      Very disturbing, Indeed.

      Who would stand for that in regard to voting or freedom of speech?

      So in order to laughingly prevent felons from obtaining firearms, just as many are punished for doing nothing by loosing their constitutional rights?

  14. Yet another reason why I cut my NRA life membership card up 19-years ago. The NRA is a political organization, not a gun rights organization. It doesn’t care about gun rights, just making money and being politically relevant.

    • Exactly. It’s because the NRA is so ineffective that the Senate was able to pass all of those gun control bills earlier this year, such as Manchin-Toomey and the Feinstein AWB.

      Oh, wait . . . .

  17. MAIG is a sinking ship, and the rats are abandoning it…Bloomberg, your days are numbered, it’s best to get out while the getting is good…

  18. Another militant ni—r in Washington, I have to commend Barry, he’s putting them all in one nice package, don’t forget the bow and rope… oops I mean sting.

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