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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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It is no wonder Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post is a Pulitzer prize winner. I enkoy listening to his provacative and informative discussions on political issues. He always cuts through the BS.
Eugene Robinson Opinion Writer
GOP witch hunt for Eric Holder reflects bigger problem
By Eugene Robinson, Thursday, June 21, 7:09 PM
In 2006, when George W. Bush was president, federal law enforcement officials came up with a spectacularly dumb idea: Allow powerful firearms purchased in the United States to “walk” across the Mexican border, where authorities would trace the weapons and eventually nab the big-time criminals who supply guns to the ultra-violent Mexican drug cartels.
It is no surprise that most of the weapons promptly disappeared.
But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), undeterred by failure, went back to the “gun-walking” technique again the following year — and used it once more in 2009, after President Obama had taken office, in the tragic fiasco known as “Operation Fast and Furious.”
These are the facts, and they don’t cover any Justice Department officials with glory. But neither do they remotely justify the partisan witch hunt by House Republicans who threaten, without legitimate cause, to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress. Obama has responded by asserting executive privilege — effectively shutting down the inquisition.
The House wants to go fishing in a vast sea of documents, some of which relate to ongoing investigations. As a believer in sunshine and disclosure, I don’t much care for questionable claims of executive privilege. But I like the politically motivated sideshow the GOP is staging even less.
Holder called the contempt threat “an extraordinary, unprecedented and entirely unnecessary action . . . an election-year tactic intended to distract attention.”
His frustration — especially with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — is understandable. Holder has acknowledged that Fast and Furious was a mistake. He has turned over more than 7,600 documents relating to the botched operation. He has personally testified on Capitol Hill about the matter on nine occasions.
Indeed, Fast and Furious was a grievous error. All told, suspects were allowed to buy more than 2,000 firearms — including AK-47s, .50-caliber sniper rifles, powerful handguns — and fewer than 700 were ever seen again. Of the weapons that were recovered, many were found at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States. But even as it became clear that Fast and Furious guns were being used as instruments of mayhem, the operation continued.
Then in December 2010, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout with suspected illegal immigrants in Arizona. Two assault rifles found at the scene were identified as Fast and Furious weapons; it could not be determined whether one of them fired the bullet that killed Terry.
In testimony before Issa’s committee, ATF agent John Dodson, a critic of the operation, stated the obvious: “I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.”
Congress has not only the right but also the duty to investigate how such a bad idea as gun-walking was conceived and executed over five years — and to make sure nothing of the sort happens again. The problem is that Issa isn’t interested in the truth. He just wants to score political points.
Issa’s focus isn’t on the operation itself. It’s on what Holder and Justice Department officials did or did not say last year when questions were first raised.
What Issa wants to do is manufacture something that can be portrayed as a high-level Obama administration cover-up. The problem is: A cover-up of what? Holder has acknowledged that the operation, of which he says he was unaware, was wrong. He has provided documents showing how wrong the operation was, and why. He has taken responsibility for the whole thing, because he is the boss. As cover-ups go, this is pretty lame.
What should Congress be investigating? The obvious first step is learning how officials in two administrations convinced themselves it was sensible to stand back and watch as powerful weapons passed into the hands of Mexican drug smugglers.
Then Congress should look into the overall flow of firearms from the United States into Mexico. The Fast and Furious weapons were just a small part of a much larger problem. Mexican officials have complained for years that lax U.S. gun laws have the effect of worsening drug-related violence along the border. The damage done by cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine smuggled north across the border is mirrored by the damage done by guns smuggled south.
If Issa really wants to save U.S. and Mexican lives, he should convene hearings on banning the sale of high-powered weapons. I think Holder would be happy to testify.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com |
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Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:07 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Archive
Eric Holder isn’t the first: Other high-profile officials held in contempt: Eric Holder isn’t the first government official who has been found in contempt by a congressional panel. Congressional Research Service compiled this list of well-known officials from prior administrations who lost committee — or even full House or Senate — contempt votes. |
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Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:08 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Eugene Robinson
Eugene Robinson: Stop the witch hunt for Eric Holder - The Washington Post http://t.co/BxhK9UgW
GOP witch hunt for Eric Holder reflects bigger problem
wapo.st/NWzLWI
‘Fast and Furious’ guns, not Eric Holder, are the real problem |
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Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:09 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Dana Milbank Opinion Writer
Republicans’ attempt to hold Holder in contempt is uphill battle
By Dana Milbank, Published: June 20
There is something charmingly futile about House Republicans’ move to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.
Even if the full House follows the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s vote Wednesday to hold him in contempt, the decision about whether to prosecute him will be left to a Justice Department run by . . . Eric Holder.
In deciding whether to prosecute himself, Holder would have to consider whether there are enough prison cells to incarcerate all the other people who are contemptuous of Congress in a country where only 15 percent of the public has a favorable view of the body. And Wednesday’s contemptible antics won’t help that statistic.
Republicans didn’t have much on Holder — it’s one of those perennial disputes about how much the executive branch needs to divulge to the legislature — so they did what sensible people usually do when they have an honest disagreement: They accused the attorney general of being an accessory to murder.
“On the night of December 14, 2010, in a canyon,” Chairman Darrell Issa (Calif.) began dramatically, border agent Brian Terry was in a firefight with Mexican bandits. “A bullet pierced agent Terry’s aorta, and he died in that canyon.” The chairman went on to say that “the committee has uncovered serious wrongdoing by the Justice Department” in the matter and that “the Terry family is still searching for answers.”
Rep. John Mica (Fla.) had the answer. The committee had an obligation to hold the attorney general “responsible for what turned into a horrible death of one of our agents,” he said. “This is the highest judicial prosecutorial position in the United States, involved in creating a situation in which an agent of the United States was murdered.”
One after the other, Republicans on the panel waved the bloody shirt. “Here’s the proof!” hollered Rep. Trey Gowdy (S.C.), claiming he had evidence that President Obama knew about a botched federal program that contributed to Terry’s death. Gowdy’s proof: that Obama cited executive privilege in denying the committee all the documents it sought. “If he’s not part of it, then he’s got no business asserting executive privilege,” Gowdy concluded.
Terry’s death is indeed a scandal, part of the “Fast and Furious” operation in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of 2,000 guns it was planning to trace on their way to Mexican drug cartels; two of those firearms were found near Terry’s body. After that, the Justice Department shut down the program (which followed similar “gun-walking” operations during the George W. Bush administration), fired or reassigned several people who ran the program out of ATF’s Phoenix office, requested an inspector-general investigation and handed over about 7,600 pages of records to Issa’s committee.
Republicans want to know whether top officials at Justice or the White House knew about the gun-walking program, which, although they haven’t turned up evidence of this, would be a reasonable line of inquiry. But casting doubt on their motives are the documents they are demanding: only those since February 2011 — two months after Terry was killed and the program was shut down.
Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) accused Issa of setting up a “kangaroo court” to convict Holder. “If this were a genuine attempt to make sure that the Terry family had closure, we’d have an open investigation,” he said, and call witnesses involved in the program over the past six years. But, Democrats complained, Issa never sought public testimony from people in the Phoenix ATF office who ran the operation, or from the former head of the ATF, who told committee investigators that he never informed Justice Department higher-ups of the operation because he didn’t know about it.
In unusually caustic terms, the committee’s ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings (Md.), accused Issa of “highly inflammatory personal attacks” on Holder (including calling him a “liar” on television) and said Issa “had no interest in resolving this issue
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The committee’s Republicans had essentially one answer to all of this: agent Terry.
By the end of the session, his name had been invoked no fewer than 54 times. “An agent was shot and killed and left to bleed out in a desert,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan (Pa.). Using the what-did-he-know-and-when-did-he-know-it language of Watergate, Meehan added: “That is the essence of what we have to get to the bottom of.”
“We have a dead United States Border Patrol agent, and we have a government that’s withholding information so that we cannot get to the bottom of it,” said the volatile Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah).
The indignation would sound more genuine if Republicans weren’t going after Holder over what has happened since Terry died.
danamilbank@washpost.com |
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Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:17 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made a bold accusation on Thursday about what is driving Republicans to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress: a desire to suppress Democratic voters in November.
"It is no accident, it is no coincidence, that the attorney general of the United States is the person responsible for making sure that voter suppression does not happen in our country," Pelosi said at her weekly briefing. "These very same people who are holding him in contempt are part of a nationwide scheme to suppress the vote. They're closely allied with those who are suffocating the system: unlimited special interest secret money."
The Democratic leader said it is "really important" to note the connection between the GOP push for a contempt vote and voter suppression efforts, particularly since, she said, the whole point is to distract from the fact that congressional Republicans aren't focused on substantive issues. She noted that the House is lining up a vote next week to hold the attorney general in contempt at a time when there are only nine days left to pass a bill to keep transportation projects funded and a bill to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling.
"Instead, let us tie the hands of the person who is assigned to make sure that the American people have the right to vote ... and that their vote is counted," Pelosi said. "It's all tied together."
As she was leaving, she emphasized her message again, unprovoked: "Don't forget, they're going after Eric Holder because he is supporting measures to overturn voter suppression initiatives in the states.
This is no accident, it is no coincidence. It is a plan on the part of the Republicans."
Pelosi's office later provided materials to back up her charge. It cited cases in 2007 where Bush administration officials fired U.S. attorneys for not pursuing "bogus" voting fraud cases in which the administration wanted action. Specifically, in March 2007, presidential adviser Dan Bartlett said one reason U.S. attorneys were being fired was because of their “lax voter-fraud investigations" into cases pushed by the administration. In April 2007, Justice Department documents revealed that one U.S. attorney had brought numerous cases against Republican donors but declined to pursue allegations of Democratic voter fraud.
Pelosi's office also pointed to an exhaustive House Judiciary Committee report from November 2007 that concluded that the decisions by Bush administration officials "to fire or retain some U.S. Attorneys may have been based in part on whether or not their offices were pursuing or not pursuing public corruption or vote fraud cases based on partisan political factors, or otherwise bringing cases which could have an impact on pending elections."
These cases are "directly related to current Republican efforts to impede AG Holder from pursuing efforts to prohibit Republican efforts to subvert voting rights," says the material from Pelosi's office. "This shows an ongoing effort by Republicans to deprive people of the right to vote dating back at least to 2007."
As for tying the voter suppression charge to big GOP donors, Pelosi's office said that conservative funders have been giving large, undisclosed funds to the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to promote voter suppression laws across the country.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was asked to respond to the voter suppression charge at his weekly briefing, but he declined. Instead, he pushed back on Pelosi's claim that Republicans are going after Holder as a diversion from their lack of work on pressing matters.
Republicans are "heavily engaged" in getting a deal on the transportation bill, Boehner said. As for the Holder contempt charges, he said people "deserve the truth" about what happened with the Justice Department's botched Fast and Furious operation.
"This is a very serious matter," Boehner said.
Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the committee that voted to hold Holder in contempt, chided Pelosi for suggesting that the Holder investigation isn't legitimate.
"This investigation began a year and a half ago after a U.S. Border Patrol Agent was murdered and guns from Operation Fast and Furious were found at the crime scene," Hill told The Huffington Post. "For Minority Leader Pelosi to dismiss this tragedy and say the investigation is really about voter suppression is offensive and wrong.”
A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to comment.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he didn't know about Pelosi's remarks and wouldn't say if he agreed with her voter suppression charge. But he said that politics are clearly driving the GOP push for a contempt vote.
"I cannot divine the motions behind what I think I've clearly suggested is something we believe has become a fishing expedition," Carney said during his daily briefing. "What we do believe is that Republican leaders have and Republican members of Congress have, through the actions that they've taken with regard to this matter, lived up to their announcement at the beginning of the year that one of their chief legislative and strategic priorities would be to investigate the administration and damage the president politically."
"If you don't believe me, I refer you to them," Carney added. "They said it."
This article has been updated to include a comment from a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). |
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Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:12 pm |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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Looks like your hero robinson dosent cut thru the BS but simply adds to it. Heres a few facts he seems to overlook while carrying water for obama and holder.
The AP claim that the Bush-era Wide Receiver and Obama-era Fast and Furious were “using the same controversial tactic” is deceptive, verging upon being a fabrication. The differences between the botched Bush-era interdiction effort that was Wide Receiver and the blatant gun-running of Obama’s Fast and Furious are something that we’ve discussed previously, but the ABC News article provides even more details that highlight just how different the operations were.
Wide Receiver was a botched, small-scale, law enforcement gun-smuggling interdiction effort that involved local Phoenix-based ATF agents working in conjunction with Mexican law enforcement. When guns were lost — roughly 200 — irate supervisors immediately shut down the program.
Wide Receiver could hardly be any more different than Fast and Furious.
Fast and Furious used elements of at least four cabinet-level departments: Justice, State, Homeland Security, and Treasury. U.S. attorneys, the directors of the FBI and DEA, the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, and senior DOJ officials were briefed. High-level State Department approval was critical, in order to avoid breaking arms export control laws. Even the White House National Security Counsil (NSC) had direct communications about the operation.
Unlike Wide Receiver, Operation Fast and Furious excluded Mexican government officials. Instead of working in conjunction with Mexican law enforcement in order to prevent gun smuggling, the operation was designed to ensure that more than 2,000 guns would be successfully smuggled into Mexico by the drug cartels to be used in violent crimes.
The same supervisors that were appalled at the failures of Wide Receiver seemed to be giddy at the “success” of Fast and Furious when the weapons they sent over the border were found at murder scenes, or taken from the bodies and stash houses of narco-terrorists.
Operation Wide Receiver was a failed law enforcement operation that was shut down immediately when it went wrong. Operation Fast and Furious was a possible criminal conspiracy to ensure that one of the most powerful and violent criminal cartels in the world was armed not with inexpensive fully-automatic military weapons that can be had on the black market very cheaply, but with sporting semi-automatics that were American-imported or manufactured firearms costing 100%-400% more. The obvious, and only logical, explanation for such a plot was to ensure that as many American weapons as possible were showing up at Mexican crime scenes.
Perhaps one day the mainstream media will finally ask who ordered Operation Fast and Furious, who approved the plot, and why.
Until then, Congress is right to push for oversight and the presidential appointment of a special counsel to investigate the criminal conspiracy and the coverup.
Bob Owens blogs at Confederate Yankee and Bob's Gun Counter. |
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"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Fri Jun 22, 2012 7:13 am |
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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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Ask Brian Terry's family how they feel about Holder.
Also, whatever happened to "the most transparent administration in history"? |
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I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Fri Jun 22, 2012 8:34 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Darrell Issa, the Not-So-Grand Inquisitor
—By Rick Ungar
| Tue Sep. 27, 2011 11:42 AM PDT
When the 2010 electoral wave handed control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) had finally arrived at his moment in the sun.
With the GOP now in the majority, the twice-arrested (but never convicted) six-term Congressman, whose ability to charm and exude good humor belies behavior that would suggest the heart of a shark, ascended to the chairmanship of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Armed with subpoena power and the authority to investigate, hassle, and obstruct the Obama White House for at least the remainder of the president's first term, Issa found himself firmly ensconced in the catbird seat.
Making the position all the sexier was the media attention that came with the job, including guest appearances on Real Time With Bill Maher, frequent visits to the cable news shows, and a busy Sunday morning network talk show schedule.
All the attention seemed to suit Rep. Issa just fine. And then…nothing
Almost a year into his term as chairman, Issa has produced no headline-grabbing investigation capable of putting the White House on the defensive or, for that matter, causing so much as a flutter of indigestion for the president. The congressman's efforts to probe everything from Homeland Security to Obamacare have failed to create the media buzz that might catapult the California representative to GOP hero status—and maybe even a spot on the national ticket as a vice presidential candidate. Who knew that the freshman tea party members were going to suck all of the oxygen from the halls of Congress and leave Chairman Issa gasping for air?
As a result of Issa's failure to kick his committee into gear, he finds himself flailing away at anything the news cycle may have to offer, hoping he might get lucky and trip over something that will manage to put a few points on the board
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Last week, Issa took a shot at attempting to tie the Obama administration to the "Fast and Furious" scandal wherein the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives allowed weapons bought in the United States to end up in the hands of a Mexican drug cartel. With the acting director of the ATF and a US Attorney already having resigned over the screw-up, it is unlikely that Issa's investigation will gather any steam or salacious headlines.
Knowing that "Fast and Furious" is likely to die a slow and sluggish death, Issa is now working hard to make a fuss over the Solyndra loan, attempting to tie political contributions to the president and the influence of Issa's Oversight Committee predecessor, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), as the reason a large loan was given to the now bankrupt solar panel company.
Said Issa:
In the case of the president's people, in the case of Henry Waxman, clearly you had people who saw a link between their campaign contributions, their ideological bent, and these companies.
Of course, what Issa failed to note is that the Solyndra loan was a multiyear process that was started by the Bush administration in 2007. He also fails to point out that while one of the investors in Solyndra is George Kaiser, an Obama contributor, another large investor is Madrone Capital Partners, an investment firm funded by the Walton family (Walmart) and a long-time large contributor to Republican causes.
As for the accusation that Issa has leveled against his congressional counterpart, Henry Waxman, Waxman has flat out denied Issa's claim, stating that he had never met anyone from Solyndra until 2011—long after the loan was made. Waxman further suggested that the chairman of so important a committee as the House Oversight panel would do well to get his facts straight.
Issa's Solyndra investigation will not only go nowhere in terms of discrediting the White House but it may also embarrass some Republicans along the way. Oops.
While some may question the competence of Issa to fill the role of inquisitor in chief, it might just be that the congressman is the victim of a White House that does business on the level, thus making itself a very difficult target. For now, the ambitious Issa remains all dressed up with nobody to attack. |
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Fri Jun 22, 2012 5:27 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Brady Blog By Dan Gross, Dennis Henigan & More
How About If We Hold Congress in Contempt?
» by Dennis Henigan on June 18th, 2012
Permalink
As a House Committee prepares to vote on a resolution citing Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress over documents sought about the botched “Fast and Furious” gun trafficking operation, the American people should be wondering: Why is there no mechanism for us to hold the Congress in contempt? A contempt citation is exactly what Congress deserves for enabling the gun trafficking that “Fast and Furious” was an ill-conceived attempt to curtail.
The contempt vote will be the Republican leadership’s latest escalation of the war against the Obama Administration over “Fast and Furious,” in which about 2,000 guns purchased from border state gun shops were allowed to “walk” into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels in a misguided effort to get at the higher-ups in the cartels’ gun trafficking operations. A month ago, in a precursor to the contempt strategy, the House Republican leadership, led by Speaker John Boehner, sent a letter to Attorney General Holder decrying the Justice Department’s alleged “lack of full cooperation” in responding to a document subpoena from Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee. Even apart from the silence of Republican leaders about the Bush Justice Department’s use of similarly flawed “gun walking” tactics, the letter wreaks of hypocrisy.
For example, Speaker Boehner and his colleagues pretend to be concerned about the “serious harm” of “Fast and Furious” to the “important bilateral relationship” between the United States and Mexico, but make no effort to explain the failure of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to respond to the desperate pleas of the Mexican government to strengthen American gun laws to curb the gun trafficking that gave rise to the “Fast and Furious” strategy in the first place. Two years ago, Mexican President Calderon told a Joint Session of Congress that the drug cartels in his country were exploiting weak American gun laws to amass their arsenals; indeed, he said the escalation of Mexican drug violence “coincides with the lifting of the assault weapons ban in 2004.” President Calderon told the Congress of his understanding that the purpose of the Second Amendment “is to guarantee good American citizens the ability to defend themselves and their Nation.” “But believe me,” he added, “many of these guns are not going to honest American hands.”
Since his address, it has become even clearer that Mexican crime guns are originating in American gun shops. Last month, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released its most recent data showing that, in the last five years, more than 68,000 crime guns were recovered in Mexico and traced back to the United States. The guns that “walked” across the border under the “Fast and Furious” operation constitute less than 3% of those guns. Where is Speaker Boehner’s concern about the other 97%?
Not only has the Republican House majority done nothing to stem the trafficking of guns to Mexico; it has acted to block the modest efforts of the Obama Administration to address the problem. The House twice has voted to block continued implementation of the Administration’s regulatory requirement that multiple sales of semi-automatic rifles in the border states be promptly reported to ATF to give the law enforcers real-time notice of the suspicious gun sales that are feeding the cartels. Given that “Fast and Furious” has been rightly criticized for allowing guns to “walk” to Mexico, it seems odd that House Republicans would object to a regulation that is enabling ATF to better stop trafficked guns before they get to the border and to arrest the traffickers
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In less than one year, ATF opened more than 120 criminal investigations based solely on the rifle reporting rule, more than 25 of which have been referred to prosecutors. It is difficult to take seriously the Republican leaders’ expression of concern about cracking down on gun trafficking, when they are working to dismantle an initiative of such obvious enforcement value. The cold reality is that Speaker Boehner and his colleagues will exploit the “Fast and Furious” fiasco for political gain, but they have no intention of doing anything to curb gun trafficking because they long ago sold their souls to the gun lobby.
Although the American people can’t hold Congress in contempt, it can hold its Members accountable at the polls come November. The American public can start now, by making it clear that there will be a political price to pay for any Member who continues to do the bidding of the gun lobby, offering nothing but transparent hypocrisy to families in Mexico, and America, put at risk by weak U.S. gun laws.
Every American can make an immediate and compelling statement by signing the Brady Campaign’s on-line petition agreeing to make the gun issue a voting issue in the upcoming elections. As Sarah Brady has said, “If our lawmakers will not change the gun laws, then for God’s sake, let’s change the lawmakers.”
For more information, see Dennis Henigan’s Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009)
Posted in ATF, Assault Weapons, Elections, Federal Legislation, General, Gun, Gun Crime, Illegal Gun Trafficking, Law Enforcement, nra
Print Spotlight
Five More Reasons to Reject the NRA’s Dark Vision
» by Dan Gross on June 12th, 2012 Permalink
In the NRA’s view of the world, Ian Stawicki was a law-abiding citizen with the right to carry a loaded gun in any neighborhood of his choosing.
Until he shot four people to death in a Seattle café and then grabbed a mom and shot her in the head near her children’s school, Washington State’s NRA-style gun carry law meant that police had no choice but to issue Stawicki a license to carry a loaded, hidden handgun. Police were not allowed to consider his long history of violence and mental illness – dangerous gun laws forced them to let him be armed and dangerous.
Stawicki’s father said he wanted his son’s concealed carry license revoked due to his son’s long history of mental illness and violence but “The response to us was, there’s nothing we can do,” because the law mandated that he could be armed. Washington State’s dangerous gun laws require police to allow public gun carrying by anyone who simply pays their fee and passes a quick background check. In California, Massachusetts, or New York police are allowed to keep dangerous people like Stawicki from carrying guns in public, but not in Washington State or the many other states whose leaders have done the NRA’s bidding and enacted its “guns anywhere” agenda.
As the NRA’s million dollars a year CEO has proclaimed, “the guys with the guns make the rules.” In the gun lobby’s utopia, it is dangerous folks like Stawicki who have the right to venture into our communities, parks and playgrounds carrying hidden, loaded guns. What about our rights? Well, in the NRA’s world, the rest of us have no right to enjoy our own neighborhoods free from the threat of gun violence, because we aren’t “the guys with the guns.”
Indeed, as police were desperately searching for Stawicki during his rampage, schoolchildren in West Seattle reported an armed gunman outside their school. The school was locked down, the frightened children kept in hiding. Yet the principal had to inform worried parents that there is nothing they can do – “The person carrying a gun seen by our students is a neighbor of the school,” out for a morning jog while armed. The children’s lesson that day? The best you can do is hide, because the gun lobby has made sure that even your teachers and parents can’t stop armed people outside your school.
In the NRA’s view of the world, flooding our communities with guns “deters would-be murderers.” Never mind that Stawicki and so many deranged killers before him could kill so many people so quickly because the gun lobby made it so easy for them to venture out armed and ready to kill. Never mind that study after study has linked public gun carrying to increased rates of violent crime like robbery and murder.
Now the NRA wants to export its armed utopia nationwide. It wants to allow public menaces like Ian Stawicki or George Zimmerman – Trayvon Martin’s killer, licensed by Florida to carry loaded, hidden guns – to be armed on just about any street in the nation. If the NRA’s “George Zimmerman Armed Vigilante Act” is enacted into law (it’s already passed the U.S. House of Representatives), we would have no right even to set the rules in our state or our own community.
We must stand up to the NRA’s deadly vision of America. Let’s tell our leaders that we have the right to protect our communities, parks and playgrounds from the dangers of guns. So the next time a parent worries that his son should not be allowed to roam the streets armed or schoolchildren report a gunman outside their school, we can act before more innocent people are killed.
Posted in Concealed Carry, Concealed Carry Crimes And Misdeeds, Federal Legislation, Law Abiding Gun Owner?
Print Spotlight
Some State AGs Would Rather Please the NRA than Enforce the Law
» by Dennis Henigan on May 25th, 2012 Permalink
Lining up public officials in support of legislation is standard fare for interest groups advancing their agenda on Capitol Hill. But the letter signed by 23 state Attorneys General in support of the National Rifle Association’s bill to nationalize concealed carry of handguns suggests that, for those public officials, pandering to the gun lobby is far more important than doing the job they were sworn to perform.
Call me naïve, but I had always thought that a State Attorney General had a solemn duty to enforce the laws of his/her state. Apparently some Attorneys General recognize a “gun law” exception to that obligation.
The legislation supported by the “Gang of 23,” the so-called “National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act” (H.R. 822), would force states to recognize the concealed carry permits of visitors from other states, even if the permit holder could not have qualified for a permit from the state he/she is visiting. Under this bill, Congress would be barring states from enforcing their restrictions on concealed carry against out-of-state visitors. In other words, the considered judgment of a state legislature that certain restrictions on concealed carry are required for the protection of the public would be nullified by H.R. 822. I would have thought these Attorneys General, as the chief law enforcement officers in their states, would want the authority to enforce these laws.
To give an example, Montana law provides that persons are not eligible to carry concealed weapons if they have been convicted of certain violent misdemeanors, such as unlawful restraint or sexual assault. Under H.R. 822, Montana could not enforce this eligibility requirement against permit holders from other states who have been convicted of those crimes. One would think that Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock would be interested in preventing sexual predators from bringing their concealed weapons into his State, but his signature appears on the letter supporting H.R. 822, asking Congress to prevent him from enforcing his state’s own laws.
It is true, as the “Gang of 23” letter points out, that many of the 23 states already have inter-state agreements recognizing the validity of certain out-of-state permits. But these are agreements the states themselves have chosen to enter into with other states. Under H.R. 822, Congress would force the states to honor the permits issued by every other state. “Reciprocity” would be a matter of federal mandate, not state choice. In effect, by supporting H.R. 822, these Attorneys General are telling the Congress: “Our elected officials cannot be trusted to make the right decisions about who should be allowed to carry concealed weapons in our state. Please make those decisions for us.“
Who are some of the people allowed to legally carry concealed weapons under the permissive laws of various states? Florida gave a concealed carry permit to George Zimmerman, even though he had been subject to a restraining order and had been involved in an altercation with the police. Had Florida’s concealed carry laws not been so weak, there is every reason to believe that Zimmerman would not have had a gun when he encountered Trayvon Martin that fateful February night and that the teenager would be alive today. A better name for H.R. 822 would be the “George Zimmerman Act,” in recognition of the mayhem it will cause to allow people like George Zimmerman to carry their hidden guns across state lines.
Now we have disclosures from Florida law enforcement that violent drug gangs in Miami are making sure some of their members obtain concealed carry permits to allow them to be legally strapped in public. The Zimmerman Act will be a godsend to the Hell’s Angels and other violent gangs with well-developed interstate operations.
The Zimmerman Act has passed the NRA-controlled House of Representatives. Similar bills, one sponsored by Senators Vitter (R-La.) and Thune (R-S.D.) and one sponsored by Sen. Begich (D-Alaska), are pending in the Senate. Nationalizing concealed carry remains the gun lobby’s top legislative priority, though the Trayvon Martin shooting finds the NRA laying low for the time being. There is no better time than the present for the “Gang of 23” to rediscover their obligations as the law enforcement leaders of their states and put their duty to enforce their states’ laws above their obeisance to the leaders of the NRA.
As for now, they should be ashamed of themselves.
For more information, see Dennis Henigan’s Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009)
Posted in Concealed Carry, Concealed Carry Crimes And Misdeeds, Federal Legislation, General, Gun, Gun Crime, Gun deaths, State Legislation, nra
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Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:47 am |
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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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| Ask Brian Terry's family how they feel about fast & furious. |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Mon Jun 25, 2012 9:04 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Brian Terry and his associates miscalculated their battle and they were using bean bag guns until they were forced to switch to live ammo. There were four assailants and only two weapons were found. The bullets killing Terry were so damaged they could not be linked to the two guns (from Fast & Furious) as the kill guns.
Over 100,000 weapons have been linked to violence in Mexico and Mexico estimates anywhere from 80 to 90 % are linked to the United States. Straw buyers from as many as 10 cities in 5 border states have been identifiesd as possible sources of these weapons. Mexico also believes some weapons are military grade and may come from the US intervention in other countries south of the border.
The increase in violence in Mexico, up to 57,000 dead, started when the ban on assault weapons ended in the US in 2004. Gun stores report sales to individuals of as many as 40 assault rifles.Who needs that many guns for their personal use?
The US government has toothless laws regaring these "lying and buying" straw buyers for the cartels. Even those caught and prosecuted really only face a year in prison. Because these sales are technically "legal" many were not even prosecuted or convicted. |
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Tue Jun 26, 2012 4:57 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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New memo's that surfaced in 2010 indicate Project Wide Receiver was more than the one operation always cited. They lost 450 guns when they cooperated with the Mexican government and the three ATF officers on the mexican side. Prior incidents were not in cooperation with Mexico and even the Bush DOJ memos show the DOJ was not completely on board with the rogue Phoenix ATF Division. Phoenix did not always tell the whole truth.
The ATF used tracking devices but it appeared the smugglers were smarter than theATf were as the tracking devices failed although the planes circles for hours. The vehicle carrying the weapons was sighted leaving the US side and reappearing 90 minutes later. The Mexican side reported they never saw the vehicle on the Mexican side.
Corruption happens when governments don't pay their police well and the drug dealers offer better perks.
The ATF in the southwest has reported numerous lost shipments, even when they followed the guns to warehouse hubs associated with shipping the guns to Mexico. And you can't arrest someone who buys guns legally, even when they make combined purchases of 40 guns for transport toMexico unless you can prove they lied on their application.
These toothless laws nee to be changed. |
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Tue Jun 26, 2012 5:11 am |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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Fast and Furious used elements of at least four cabinet-level departments: Justice, State, Homeland Security, and Treasury. U.S. attorneys, the directors of the FBI and DEA, the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, and senior DOJ officials were briefed. High-level State Department approval was critical, in order to avoid breaking arms export control laws. Even the White House National Security Counsil (NSC) had direct communications about the operation.
Unlike Wide Receiver, Operation Fast and Furious excluded Mexican government officials. Instead of working in conjunction with Mexican law enforcement in order to prevent gun smuggling, the operation was designed to ensure that more than 2,000 guns would be successfully smuggled into Mexico by the drug cartels to be used in violent crimes.
The same supervisors that were appalled at the failures of Wide Receiver seemed to be giddy at the “success” of Fast and Furious when the weapons they sent over the border were found at murder scenes, or taken from the bodies and stash houses of narco-terrorists.
Operation Wide Receiver was a failed law enforcement operation that was shut down immediately when it went wrong. Operation Fast and Furious was a possible criminal conspiracy to ensure that one of the most powerful and violent criminal cartels in the world was armed not with inexpensive fully-automatic military weapons that can be had on the black market very cheaply, but with sporting semi-automatics that were American-imported or manufactured firearms costing 100%-400% more. The obvious, and only logical, explanation for such a plot was to ensure that as many American weapons as possible were showing up at Mexican crime scenes.
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"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Tue Jun 26, 2012 6:59 am |
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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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| Brian Terry was shot & killed by one of the guns "walked" into Mexico by fast & Furious. The bean bags were DOJ policy, which contributed to his death. |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:36 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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| There were four shooters and two weapons were recovered that were from fast and furious. The bullets were so damaged that it was never proven that these guns were the ones that killed Terry |
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Tue Jun 26, 2012 3:43 pm |
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