Posted on 07/13/2011 9:53:46 AM PDT by topher
In the wake of swelling outrage over the Obama administration’s fatally botched Fast and Furious straw gun purchase racket, the DOJ is punishing the very whistleblowers who protested the scheme in the first place.
This is a head fake.
Instead of exercising more control over lawless bureaucrats within its own agencies, the Obama administration is tightening its grip over law-abiding gun shops:
The new reporting requirement will help the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “detect and disrupt” border gun-smuggling operations, Deputy Atty. Gen. James Cole said Monday.
Once the ATF distributes its new reporting forms, about 7,000 dealers near the border must report multiple sales of semiautomatic weapons in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Such weapons “are highly sought after by dangerous drug-trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest border,” Cole said.
Republican critics quickly denounced the measure, saying it was wrong for the Obama administration to let illegal guns get into the hands of Mexican cartels in Operation Fast and Furious, and then require more monitoring of legitimate gun owners in the U.S. Under the program, the ATF permitted illegal straw purchasers to obtain weapons as part of a plan to trace the guns as they flowed to Mexico.
“It’s the height of hypocrisy,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who is leading the House investigation into Fast and Furious, called it a “political maneuver designed to protect the careers of political appointees at the Justice Department and not public safety.” As a backlash mounts over the government’s failed Fast and Furious gun-tracing operation, the Justice Department will begin requiring firearms dealers in California and other border states to alert officials anytime they sell more than two semiautomatic rifles to someone in a five-day period.
NRA will sue over the new regs.
Sipsey Street Irregulars sums it up best:
Of course this is another ratchet on the attempt at back-door arms registration… Ironic, ain’t it? It is as if the ATF is admitting that it was incompetent (deliberately or otherwise) in the Gunwalker Scandal and was having trouble keeping track of their cartel straw buyers so now they insist that the FFLs [federal firearms licenesses] who previously tried voluntarily to help them, now must help them.
Ignore the distraction.
Keep your eye on the corruptocrats’ ball. The latest:
Kenneth Melson, the embattled chief of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), made the earth-shaking revelation in testimony early last week, The Times reports. Melson reportedly told congressional leaders that Mexican cartel suspects tracked by his agents in a controversial gun-tracing program were also operating as paid informants for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the FBI.
Are high-profile suspects in Mexican drug cartels also paid informants for U.S. federal investigators? If so, could a brewing scandal in Washington implicate more U.S. agencies in the ongoing drug-related violence in Mexico?
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More: Here’s the latest on the brewing Tampa gunwalking allegations.
***
On a side note: While I was on vacay, old news about Fast and Furious’s parent program, the stimulus-funded Project Gunrunner, somehow got recycled as new news. But if you read my column and extensive post with links back in March, you already are in the know. David Codrea and Bob Owens try to clear up confusion sown by latecomers.
This is a reference to an article from CNSNews.com...
NRA Will Sue Obama Administration Over New Gun-Control Measure
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
By Susan Jones
Something tells me this will go all the way to the top.
We have ATF agents and Drug Warlords that both say US Federal Government was selling weapons to them. At the very same time the Federal Government was saying that this is happening, but failed to mention it was because of them.
We have dead people because of it. It’s crime plain and simple and now it’s trying to be covered up at the top. This needs to be investigated all the way to the top.
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
“It’s the height of hypocrisy,” said Lamar Smith
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Just another day screwing the Republic for the Obama administration and its agenda.
"Yeah...you caught us. So what? Gimme that AR-15. We're from the Government. It's for your own safety."
what is even more shocking is that our so called representatives in congress are allowing it all to take place.
It looks like we’ll have to protect ourselves from these from these progressive fascists!!
Be Ever Vigilant!!
A very important logistical component of this operation was the believe of the Obama admin that DEATH —probably on a large scale— would eventuate.
Turn THAT over in your mind and what it says about the values of the people who used YOUR money to permit this. What things might they NOT be willing to do..?
Also, it appears that a part of Operation Castaway in Honduras had the FOREIGN POLICY objective of punishing the new Honduran Prez via creation of a new, de-facto narcoMarxist army there.
A likely secondary aim of Castaway; the new Honduran admin there would be embattled with completely new levels of violence from US guns, and would complain to the UN, which would then demand that the US sign the UN charter on small-arms trade.
So:
1. A Honduran Obama enemy would be punished
2. US gun-owners would lose their rights
3. Obama could cast himself as simply bowing to foreign pressure
ALL THAT WAS REQUIRED WAS FOR A BUNCH OF FOLKS TO DIE
A leftist will always accuse YOU of the thing they’re about to do —”Bush lied and people died...”
Where is Drudge and Breitbart on all this? This is bigger than Monica...
Finished cocaine is bought by Mexies for $3,000 per key, while unprocessed BASE is just $1,000. How might Mexies TRIPLE their profits with about the same risk? A bit like the oil industry; by moving upstream and also owning the mechanism for processing cocaine base in central America.
Docs related to F&F and Castaway show an interesting confluence of Mexy narco financial interests with Obama political interests:
Mexicans wanted a Honduran operating environment permitting for their own cocaine processing there, further south to the source of the product. This would permit Mexicans to bypass middlemen, collecting the profits these others had enjoyed to that point.
Meanwhile, via arms sales to these dangerous Mexican criminals, Obama would win its own new friends in Central America. As a topper, in the process he would also end up disallowing easy gun sales to law-abiding Americans —call it the Chicago-ization of the whole USA.
Note that more and more docs uncovered refer to “DEA, ATF **AND OTHER AGENCIES” —so this imbroglio clearly had SECRET FOREIGN POLICY OBJECTIVES.
—>THIS IS IRAN-CONTRA ALL OVER AGAIN<—
I gotta say...that's not possible. US gun owners can be enjoined by a repressive government from exercising their God given rights. But pukes like Obama can't cause us to lose them.
Semantics? Perhaps. But it is a distinction that will be made very clear to anyone who knocks on my door trying to confiscate my firearms.
Obama sold guns to the Mexicans.
The Americans caught him.
Now Americans have to report to Obama when they sell guns to Americans.
Am I following this right?
I think I copied it from MM!
Great summation!
Issa and Grassley and whoever else is on this better not let go.
I hope they follow this all the way to the White House.
They need to hold on like pit bulls.
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