Politics is full of ironies. But June 28, 2012, should be logged as one for the irony record book. On that day, Attorney General Eric Holder was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigating the botched "Fast and Furious" gun tracing operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Chief among the forces arrayed against Holder was the National Rifle Association, which pressured members of Congress to support the contempt citation. Among the NRA's fevered charges against Holder: "his history of anti-Second Amendment advocacy and enforcement actions," including support for a measure, beaten back by NRA supporters, to require gun dealers to report multiple long gun sales.
Yet at nearly the same time, a six-month investigation by Fortune Magazine revealed that the ATF did not engage in "gun walking" (that is, deliberately letting guns fall into the hands of Mexican criminals) after all. In fact, ATF agents were doing everything possible to try and bring prosecutions. But, according to the article, ATF agents "were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn." Existing law made it nearly impossible to bring charges against straw purchasers. To prosecutors, these cases were "hard to prove and unrewarding to prosecute, with minimal penalties attached."
But the rest of this tragic story is that it is the culmination, and logical conclusion, of the NRA's 30-year war against the ATF, aimed to hamstring, denude, emasculate, and hogtie the agency charged with administering the nation's gun laws. No other federal law enforcement agency has had to function under such relentless attacks.
In a 1981 NRA-produced film called It Can Happen Here, ATF agents were depicted as "Nazi Gestapos" and "jackbooted fascists." The following year, Rep. John Dingell, then an NRA Board member, called ATF agents "knaves and rogues," saying "I think they [the agents] are evil."
NRA demonization of the ATF reached a fever pitch in the early 1990s when it and other critics charged the ATF with murder and the persecution of innocent citizens. That criticism was fanned because of the ATF's role in the raid on the Branch Davidian cult near Waco, Texas, in 1993 (four ATF agents were killed and 20 wounded). In a full-page ad run in national newspapers, the NRA said that the ATF "deserves public contempt." Rep. Harold Volkmer, also an NRA Board member, called the ATF a "Rambo-rogue law enforcement" agency. Radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy counseled his listeners to fire "head shots" at ATF agents who approached them because the agents "got a vest underneath."
These vituperative attacks subsided only after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, in which ATF agents died. That attack occurred just weeks after NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre called the ATF "jack-booted government thugs... wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms to attack law-abiding citizens" in a fund-raising letter.
NRA-led attacks on the ATF haven't been limited to verbal assaults. Working relentlessly in Congress, the ATF's size, budget, and operations have all been hamstrung. The agency has been barred, by law, from inspecting gun dealers more than once a year (even for previous law-breakers) and some violations were reduced to misdemeanors. The ATF is also barred by law from maintaining gun trace records in a computer database, meaning that, even today, gun traces must be done by hand from paper records. Further, the law does not require gun dealers to take inventory. For the last six years, the ATF has operated without a permanent head of the agency, thanks to the obstruction of NRA-backed senators.
According to the Washington Post, in 1972 the ATF had 2500 agents. By comparison, the DEA had 1500, the U.S. Marshals 1900, and the FBI 8700. In 2010, the DEA had 5000, federal Marshals 3300, and the FBI 13,000. The ATF still had 2500 agents. In all, it has 600 personnel to inspect 115,000 gun dealers, meaning that on average, a dealer is inspected once every ten years.
Taking all this into account, is it any wonder that the nearly 10,000 gun dealers found along the border between the U.S. and Mexico constitute a largely unregulated arms bazaar for Mexican drug gangs? As the ATF recently reported, of the over 99,000 guns recovered by the Mexican government from 2007-2011 and submitted for tracing, over 68,000 (about 70%) came from the U.S.
Sure, Congress deserves blame for enacting laws deliberately designed to keep the ATF from doing its job. But no one can dispute that these destructive and senseless policies exist thanks to the NRA. Just as the NRA continues to blame the ATF for the 2000 guns allegedly "walked" into Mexico, the NRA should take the real credit for the "walking" of hundreds of thousands of guns into Mexico, as American agents can do little more than watch.
"... After 18 months, no evidence has emerged showing Holder, his top lieutenants, or any White House officials or staff authorized the discredited tactics of Fast and Furious, or deliberately concealed information about those tactics from Congress.
Issa's failure to secure any damning evidence against top officials suggests that his investigation has largely run its course, said Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore Law School.
"This contempt vote is not the beginning of something. It's the end of something," Tiefer said. "It's the last little bit of life that can be squeezed out of the Fast and Furious investigation...."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/eric-holder-contempt-fast-and-furious_n_1635891.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304141204577506881495497626.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
J. Andrew Smith, Bloomfield, N.J.
Monday, July 2, 2012 | 2 a.m.
George W. Bush invoked executive privilege six times: 1. Block Congress from documents regarding Boston mob informants and Bill Clinton’s fundraising tactics, 2. Conceal who was at Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy-policy meetings, 3. Block Harriet Miers’s subpoena to Karl Rove regarding federal prosecutor firings, 4. Conceal from Congress Cheney’s FBI interview about Valerie Plame’s outing, 5. Block subpoenas of EPA documents about California’s reducing greenhouse gases and overriding scientific recommendations on ozone standards, and 6. Hinder the investigation of harsh interrogation tactics.
Neither Rove nor Rep. Darrell Issa ever apparently complained then, but they’re both complaining now.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/jul/02/bush-used-executive-privilege-six-times/
"I really don’t want to spend all my time...pointing out the vulgar stupidity and ineptitude of the Republican Party, but it’s like shooting lay-ups or kicking twenty-yard field goals.
... the so-called “Fast and Furious” investigation, in which...Darrell Issa, alleged that the Obama administration had allowed the ATF to “walk guns” across the border to Mexico ...not only is that all a crock, but that the actual culprit of the story is Republican-backed, National Rifle Association-sponsored legislation and lobbying that has turned Arizona into a gun-smuggler’s paradise....the only person who actually walked guns was the so-called whistleblower John Dodson...Meanwhile, the firearms that ended up at Terry's murder scene weren’t being walked by the ATF, but the straw purchasers who bought them were under surveillance.The ATF couldn’t stop the guns from going across the border, however, because Arizona’s gun laws are those of Third World failed state....
... the vote of contempt for Attorney General Eric Holder looks like as much of a partisan witch hunt as he's been claiming this entire time...Democrats and the President should probably let Issa and his committee drag this story out in the light because it's about to blow up in their faces."
http://articles.redeyechicago.com/2012-07-02/news/32526931_1_trafficking-guns-track-guns-gun-laws
www.cleanupatf.org
This is the website by ATF agents, for ATF agents. THIS IS WHAT STARTED THE INVESTIGATION. Of course, I believe this would be TOXIC to your blathering about this particular subject. Don't let the facts get in the way of your own maundering mind.
I guess Obama's past voting record and comments regarding gun ownership are to be dismissed.
Darrell Issa, the congressman about to make life more difficult for President Obama, has had some troubles of his own.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=8
"...The totality of the evidence -- including the ATF and Justice Department documents that directly contradict Howard's revised position, and his own earlier defense of ATF -- undermines his subsequent claims. And neither the Lone Wolf case, nor the one episode in which Voth encouraged a gun sale in the hopes of making an arrest in the parking lot of the store right after the sale, support the assertion that the ATF had a policy to intentionally permit gun-trafficking to Mexico."
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/03/fast-and-furious-follow-up-the-atf-and-gun-stores/
Pierce's analysis "blew everybody away" at the ATF, recalled Joseph R. Vince Jr., then deputy chief of the firearms division. Law enforcement might be able to reduce crime by focusing on a relative handful of gun dealers.
The Clinton administration seized on the findings to encourage police to request a trace on every gun they confiscated. In 2000, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, who oversaw the ATF, announced "intensive inspections" of the 1 percent - 1,012 gun stores.
The inspections detected serious problems. Nearly half of the dealers could not account for all of their guns, for a total of 13,271 missing firearms. More than half were out of compliance with record-keeping. And they had made nearly 700 sales to potential traffickers or prohibited people. More than 450 dealers were sanctioned, and 20 were referred for license revocation...."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/23/AR2010102303763.html