The Obama administration and even its Mexican counterpart have manipulated public opinion to believe that the cartel drug wars are being fueled largely by American guns. In support of that spin, they are trying to impose a new regulation that requires licensed firearms dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to report to the federal government whenever someone buys from them more than one semiautomatic rifle with certain characteristics.
Obama's Department of Justice essentially is amending the Second Amendment by changing the rules for gun sales in border states. While working under the guise of stopping illegal contraband and fighting drug cartels, the White House in reality is further imposing its gun control agenda on the American public through back-door rule-making. This is just one more example of the feds exceeding their powers and avoiding congressional permission. It is also another showing of complete disregard for the Constitution.
Based upon those illegalities, Wayne LaPierre -- my friend and the CEO of the National Rifle Association -- disclosed on Fox News recently that the NRA filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to issue an injunction barring enforcement of the rule. And with NRA support, the U.S. House has voted to withhold funding for the enforcement of the new regulation.
As LaPierre wrote in his weekly commentary last week, "the cartels run a $40 billion enterprise ... but the (Obama) administration wants the public to believe that it's going to disarm cartels with a form? Who is the president kidding?"
Doesn't Obama know that restricting the right to bear arms primarily ties the hands of good guys while the bad guys purchase them from a host of illegal sources? And what part of "shall not be infringed" in the Second Amendment do the feds not understand?
Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department will "vigorously oppose" the NRA lawsuit.
The fact is, as LaPierre points out, that cartels get their machine guns, grenades, missile launchers and tanks from Central America, South America, Russia, China, international black markets and defectors of the Mexican army. State Department cables, released by WikiLeaks, support that fact.
On the one hand, Fox News reported that in 2009-10, more than 20,000 guns recovered in Mexico came from U.S. manufacturers. On the other hand, 75 percent of guns submitted to the U.S. could not be traced to a licensed gun store. But there is one place to which more than 2,000 crime guns could be traced: the federal government.
The winner of the "Largest American Supplier of Guns to Mexico" award is actually the Obama administration, via Operation Fast and Furious -- a botched, foiled and disastrous sting operation by the ATF's Phoenix division to uncover a large network of cartel-linked gunrunners. During 2009-11, through Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF facilitated the sale of 2,020 firearms to suspected smugglers over 15 months!
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have been researching information on the Fast and Furious program for months. Grassley and Issa recently blew the whistle that to date, "hundreds of these weapons have already been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico." (Your tax dollars hard at work!)
Among the tragic consequences was the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, gunned down in the Arizona desert last December. Two AK-47 semiautomatic rifles found at the scene were traced directly to the Fast and Furious sting.
As far as the Obama administration's culpability goes, The Washington Times reported that Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "noted that Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson told congressional investigators the agency's senior leadership would have preferred to cooperate more with the congressional investigation of the operation, but Justice Department officials directed ATF not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress."
To add insult to injury, the ATF recently promoted three key Operation Fast and Furious supervisors, who allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico, to new management jobs in Washington!
The truth is that the Obama administration is involved right now in a monumental cover-up regarding its criminally handing over thousands of firearms to gunrunners and smugglers. And to duck and dodge its responsibility for those illegalities by now coming across as the vanguard of gun control by cracking down on the sale of two guns to an American at one time is preposterous hypocrisy.
Moreover, to unilaterally mandate this new federal rule so close to the Fast and Furious debacle is more than coincidental, especially in light of the fact that the administration tabled the proposed regulation in January because it was "not an emergency." The only thing that has changed is the embarrassing revelation of the ATF disaster.
The Obama administration is trying to not only eliminate our Second Amendment rights but also demonize good, law-abiding American gun dealers and citizens in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. It is not only smuggling its guns but also trying to take ours. And I, for one, am not going to sit back and just watch it happen.
God, guns and guts made America. Let's keep all three.
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