Free Republic

"Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States," President Obama said during a speech at Mexico's Anthropology Museum. "I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms. And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will.""But at the same time, as I’ve said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. That can save lives here...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: April 16, 2009. This from CNN's website: "Reviving a ban on assault weapons and more strictly enforcing existing gun laws could help tamp down drug violence that has run rampant on the US-Mexican border, President Obama said Thursday. Speaking alongside Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama said he has 'not backed off at all' on a campaign pledge to try to restore the ban. It was instituted under President Clinton and allowed to lapse by President George W. Bush. 'I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment right in our Constitution -- the...

In one heck of an analogy, then U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. – Eric Holder – likened guns to cigarettes, saying that perceptions about guns needed to become more stigmatized. He said this during a speech in 1995 and suggested an aggressive advertising campaign to convince the public that this was true. At one point, he literally said that he wanted the advertising to be so pervasive that it would “brainwash” people. To Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America (GOA), such advocacy on the part of Holder flies in the face of his Constitutional oath. “As...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — President Felipe Calderon on Thursday unveiled a “No More Weapons!” billboard made with crushed firearms and placed near the U.S. border. He urged the United States to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico. The billboard, which is in English and weighs 3 tons, was placed near an international bridge in Ciudad Juarez and can be seen from the United States.

The debate over U.S. gun laws and Mexican drug violence brings to mind Mark Twain’s famous quip about lies, damned lies, and statistics. In a recent editorial, the Washington Post blamed American policies for exacerbating the bloodshed, pointing out that “70 to 80 percent of the traceable guns seized in Mexico can be tracked to the United States.” The key word there is “traceable.” While it’s true that most of the traceable guns originated north of the border, those weapons represent a very small portion of total Mexican gun seizures.According to a Government Accountability Office study based on data...

Scandal: Newly obtained documents show that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives discussed using its covert operation Fast and Furious to argue for new rules about gun sales. We told you so. As we observed in June, the way Fast and Furious — the government's gun-running operation that resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — was conducted made no sense unless its intent was to facilitate violence with U.S. weapons in the interests of pursuing the administration's gun-control agenda. Now documents obtained by CBS News confirm that our first suspicions were correct. As CBS'...

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales. PICTURES: ATF "Gunwalking" scandal timeline In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Those of you at the Sullivan Group out in Sacramento, my opinion auditing firm, you better listen up. I gotta go up now, I gotta go up above 99.6. I mean Fast and Furious, right on the money, I called it. Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News, found evidence in the e-mails that the whole plan was about affecting gun laws in this country, exactly as I prognosticated all the way back on July 7th of this year. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I take you back to this program. This is me on July 7th of this year. RUSH ARCHIVE:...

Eric Holder is being blamed for a program that is not his creation Miller Elisa/Elisa Miller for NewsRepublicans are roasting AG Eric Holder over an ATF program that precedes him by several years. Operation Fast and Furious, the attempt to stop gun trafficking into Mexico gone horribly wrong, is now providing political fodder for a Washington game of “gotcha” that underscores everything wrong with our political system. In Fast and Furious, federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents allowed guns illegally purchased at American gun shops by Mexican gun-runners to be taken back to Mexico, with the hope that...

The theory, in brief, is that the Obama administration deliberately pumped guns into Mexico through Operation Fast and Furious in an effort to create a justification to impose gun control measures. I boiled the theory down to this...: 1. Obama and Holder support gun control but needed a pretext to implement it. 2. The administration argued falsely in 2009 that U.S. guns made up 90 percent of those used in Mexican gun crimes. That was the same time when Operation Fast and Furious began. 3. By flooding Mexico with high-powered weapons they were able to justify restrictions on U.S. guns....

When Jim and Sarah Brady met with Barack Obama on the 30th anniversary of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, they asked the President how he would help to advance their Handgun Control, Inc (now the Brady Campaign) gun control/gun confiscation agenda. Obama’s response: “I just want you to know that we are working on it. We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.” In the seven months since that meeting, many have suggested Obama’s comment was a dark reference to the criminal Operation Fast and Furious. After all, without the courage of ATF whistle blowers,...

(CNSNews.com) – Making a case for national gun registration, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said “perhaps mistakes were made” in the botched gun-walking program known as Fast and Furious, but she said trying to assign blame misses the larger problem. “This is a deep concern for me. I know others disagree, but we have very lax laws when it comes to guns,” Feinstein, an advocate of gun control, said during Tuesday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. “My concern, Mr. Chairman, is that there’s been a lot said about Fast and Furious, and perhaps mistakes were made,”...

During a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing today on Capitol Hill, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who is facing pressure surrounding his role in the Obama Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious, asked for more gun control and blamed law abiding gun shop owners for violence in Mexico. Breuer declared that nearly 70 percent of guns found in Mexico come from the United States, a figure that has been disproven by the National Rifle Association, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and by Senator Charles Grassley’s office multiple times.  Also during testimony, Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein pushed for more gun control and Breuer expressed his...

On March 30, the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady, who sustained a debilitating head wound in the attack, and his wife, Sarah, came to Capitol Hill to push for a ban on the controversial “large magazines.” Brady, for whom the law requiring background checks on handgun purchasers is named, then met with White House press secretary Jay Carney. During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said. “I just...

The testimony before the Oversight committee by Holder and numerous officials from the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies was a clinic on obfuscation -- and it left Issa with little choice. “It’s time we know the whole truth,” Issa said of this latest development in the widening scandal. “The documents this subpoena demands will provide answers to questions that Justice officials have tried to avoid since this investigation began eight months ago.” The California Republican is not a lawyer by profession, but Issa, along with his relatively small staff, has managed to go toe-to-toe with...

The government-sanctioned gunrunning operation Fast and Furious was a plot to undermine Second Amendment rights in the United States, National Rifle Association officer Wayne LaPierre charged on Friday in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense,” LaPierre said. “Over a period of two or three years they were running thousands and thousands of guns to the most evil people on earth. At the same time they were yelling ’90 per cent… of the guns the Mexican drug cartels are using come from the United States.’ “That was a phony figure from the very start....

"It was a joint operation in which DEA knew more than ATF." It was a brutal weekend for the Obama administration: Gunwalker continued unraveling at a faster pace, with new developments suggesting that Attorney General Eric Holder may not be the only Obama appointee destined for a political fall and possible criminal charges. In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa revealed for the first time that the Drug Enforcement Administration was far more involved in running the operation than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives: It...

EXCLUSIVE: You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States. -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City. -- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama. -- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges,...

Could Fast and Furious be the scandal that brings down the Obama administration?  With the full knowledge of the Department of Justice, ATF agents facilitated the sale of thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and dropped all surveillance of those weapons once they crossed the border.  Weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious have been used to shoot U.S. border control agents.  Weapons sold during Operation Fast and Furious have been found at dozens of crime scenes in Mexico.  Nobody has been held accountable for this scandal yet.  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been stonewalling all efforts by...

For months, congressional investigators have battled a recalcitrant White House and Department of Justice over Operation Fast and Furious, a conspiracy that had the apparent goal of sending thousands of guns from American gun stores into Mexico. Recovery of the guns could be used as evidence to support the Obama administration’s 90-percent lie — and perhaps even serve a more nefarious goal. That deception seems to be collapsing, as the long suspected proof of other gunwalking operations was confirmed by Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News: An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned...