Posted on 07/30/2012 6:35:57 AM PDT by marktwain
The scheme known as Fast and Furious is, for the moment, out of the headlines. It is to be hoped that this will change, since U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered with one of the thousands of weapons that Attorney General Holder and others conspired to allow Mexican drug cartels to purchase in Arizona in violation of U.S. law.
Since various Administration officials have lengthy records of extremist anti-Second Amendment activism it's no surprise that, as CBS News revealed, they utilized Fast and Furious to mobilize public opinion in support of harsher gun laws. Some members of the Administration have gone so far as to publicly express their disdain for the Constitution, and their intention to "fundamentally transform" the United States. Depriving Americans of the right to possess firearms would be an important part of such a transformation.
Thus, this conspiracy to let agents of the Mexican cartels buy these guns was just one step in the Long March to that planned fundamental transformation. Accordingly, it must have seemed quite reasonable to Attorney General Holder and his co-conspirators to hatch a plot they had to know would inevitably lead to violence and death. And given Holder's attitude it is clear that to him Agent Terry's life was but a small price to pay to promote the agenda.
For those on the Left it is irrelevant whether gun laws reduce crime. Rather, it is part to their vision of a United States whose sovereignty, independence, power and self confidence are sapped. For the rest of us, those of us who care whether gun laws actually prevent criminals from obtaining weapons, the proof that such efforts simply cannot lower crime rates can be found in the archives of the NY Times.
For example:
On August 8, 1973, C.L. Sulzberger in a Times op-ed piece, Arms and the Soviet Man, reported that "underground gun factories had been discovered" in several Republics within the Soviet Union. "Machine tools have been stolen from government factories" and used to make guns, "including pistols disguised as fountain pens" and there are "considerable quantities of explosives and firearms" in four Republics." Noted Sulzberger, "The interesting thing is that Soviet society, with its known predilection for discipline and supervision should be suffering at all from this kind of ailment."
Other newspapers have echoed these reports. On December 11, 1988 England's Manchester Guardian reported that "the number of weapons held illegally in Azerbaijan [then a part of the USSR] is clearly formidable."
The Times has reported several times on the illegal manufacture of firearms in that most brutal and effective of police states, Maoist China. On February 10, 1980 its Peking reporter, Fox Butterfield, described a recent Peking bank robbery and stated that during Mao's rule "many workers in factories are said to have fashioned knives and guns." In June of that year Butterfield reported on another Peking bank robbery in which two criminals carried four homemade guns. Other news articles in the Times have described gang wars and other criminal acts in China where such bootleg weapons were used.
In these two highly regimented Communist police states even the ownership of machine tools by private individuals was strictly forbidden, as was their use for private purposes. Yet in both nations, during the height of Communist power and despite omnipresent informers, bootleg guns were made either by stealing the machinery outright for use in underground factories or were used to make guns in state owned factories under the noses of authorities.
The Times archives provide many other examples of the ease with which guns of any sort can be fabricated quickly and in large numbers even in primitive conditions. On may 7, 1987 Times correspondent Seth Mydans reported on Philippine gun bootleggers who manufactured to order "sophisticated copies of European and American handguns complete with nickel or silver plate and counterfeit brand markings." In the town of Danao "3,000 gun makers provided a livelihood, directly or indirectly, for 60% of the residents." A portion of their products are "periodically discovered" being smuggled into Japan.
Mydans described a typical gun maker, Benjamin Barriga, who produced these copies "on a hand turned lathe in a pigsty that abuts his thatched home..." And another manufacturer "whose five-man assembly line shares a thatched workshop with wandering pigs and chickens."
The Times reported on August 18, 1980 on fighting between Moslems and Hindus in the Indian state of Kashmir "where the manufacture of so-called country guns is something of a cottage industry." On April 27, 1987 the Times reported widespread gun bootlegging in the Indian state of Bihar, where "even an old truck's steering wheel can be fashioned into a gun barrel at one of dozens of makeshift factories."
Thus, experience proves that even in the violently repressive police states or under primitive conditions the most sophisticated and varied kinds of weapons can be bootlegged.
In the U.S. there are of course no restrictions on the private ownership of machine tools; anyone with a little cash can buy a lathe and milling machine, and the necessary skills are readily acquired or hired. With millions of available machine tools and millions of garages and basements in which bootleg factories can be established, the number of guns that can be illegally produced is unlimited.
Predictably, the tighter that firearms restrictions would become, the greater would be the rewards for bootlegging. Thus, the only way to enforce such laws would be to emulate, and go much further than, the Communist dictatorships which themselves failed to stamp out gun bootlegging.
It would be laughable to attempt enforcement without first prohibiting the private, individual possession of the machine tools. Those remaining in factories would have to be carefully monitored and controlled. Naturally, few Americans would willingly obey bans on ownership of tools. To enforce those bans the guarantees under the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure would have to be abandoned in order to permit random inspection of homes and shops suspected of harboring machinery or machinists.
So let us suppose Holder's Fast and Furious conspiracy had succeeded in mobilizing public support in such a way as to satisfy to the fullest the gun banning desires of Chicago Democrats. The evidence from Mao's China, the USSR, the Philippines, et al. via the NY times makes it obvious that the only way to enforce such a ban would be to abandon our long held Constitutional protections of personal freedom, property, and privacy. And that would require a fundamental transformation of American society.
Ah, but of course. That fundamental transformation is exactly what has been declared as the goal. A dead American lawman is a small price to pay for that, and as Holder has said, no apology need be given.
Gunwalker / Murdergate ping.
Not in my lifetime.
They pointed out several great historical examples of how gun control fails even in rigid totalitarian states.
However, something that should also be noted is the fate of those totalitarian states themselves.
In the final analysis, Progressivism has become just another branch of internationalism-socialism, which is based on a simple theory: “If 90% of the world’s population is totally controlled by us, the elite 10%, that determine absolutely every element of life, down to the most unimportant detail, from birth to death, then (something) will be ‘better’.”
Yet what is the reality?
Perhaps the first modern police state, which had most of the elements most of us would recognize in a police state, such as secret policemen, constant surveillance of people and communications, spies and informants, and brutalitarian treatment of all opposition, happened surprisingly early in human history.
The first emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang (259 BC – 210 BC) is remembered for many things, including the unification of China, the standardization of weights and measures and the written (if not oral) Chinese language, starting construction of parts of the Great Wall, and HE was the guy who was buried with the “terracotta army”.
But at the same time, he and his top advisor, named Li Si, centralized state control, engaged in ruthless military conquest, and murderous persecution of any opposition.
They created an enormous secret police and network of informants, encouraged children to inform on their parents, burned vast numbers of books and ordered historians buried alive to prevent comparisons with the past, and also created an immense bureaucracy to regulate as much of China as possible.
With his death, Li Si and his chief eunuch conspired to install a puppet emperor, both incompetent and vicious, whose reign rivaled that of Roman Emperor Caligula. He lasted for 15 years before it failed with tremendous loss of life and the emperor was forced to commit suicide.
“Sic semper tyrannis.”
Author made a reference to CBS revealing the purpose of FAst and Furious, but didn’t give a citation.
Does anyone know of anything that CBS did that would be a cofirmation of the administration purposeful use of Fast and Furious to whip up support for gun control?
It has been an article of faith among our FR community that the major media have ignored Fast and Furious and all the possible implications of it.
Hehehehe, Ruger SR-1911. I’ve got one of those with Trijicon sights and a Crimson Trace laser installed. I LOVE it! All American made right down to the smallest screw.
Didn’t Obama prom ise to”Fundamentally Change America”???????????????
It’s a war they want....
It’s a war they will get.
As far as death count goes, how many Aurora Joker Theater shootings would equal one Fast and Furious?
Ten?
20?
50??
And how many federal agents died in Aurora?
“...Gun Control Laws Will “Fundamentally Transform” America:...”
Sure they will.
Into a battlefield and a wasteland.
I’m starting to think that these folks pushing this are truly insane. Criminally psychotic, actually.
Dozens of friends I would never have expected to are arming up: All law abiding (so far) and many rather liberal until recently.
Not sure exactly which Dylan song to settle on as I keep my ear to the ground about these matters, but many are competing for my mental landscape these days. Anyone else out there think a separate thread on this is warranted? :)
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