Gunwalker: From Obama’s Inauguration to Issa’s Report

[Geee]

Pajamas Media:

Major scandals don’t always have the most dramatic beginnings. Andrew Johnson was impeached for replacing the sitting secretary of war; Richard Nixon’s collapse started with a breaking and entering. Bill Clinton’s infamy was guaranteed for quibbling over the definition of a common verb.

It now appears that high-ranking officials in the Obama administration may be writing the end of their careers and risking a life behind bars by arguing about the technical definition of “walking” firearms.

“Gunwalker” now involves the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); its parent agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ); the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); and the White House itself. But to understand the depth of the scandal you must return to its roots at the beginning of the Obama adminstration.

Within weeks of President Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009, newly installed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder began to craft the meme that Mexican drug cartel violence was rooted in what they view as lax American gun laws. By February 4, we were hearing the infamous “90 percent lie,” the administration’s false accusation that 90 percent of the guns used in cartel crime could be traced to U.S. gun shops.

The assertion was not based upon the total percentage of civilian-origin firearms captured from Mexican cartels and traced back to U.S. gun shops, but upon the small percentage of weapons that the Mexican government saw markings on which indicated they could have come from or through the States. Only this much smaller percentage of guns were sent to the ATF for tracing. Unsurprisingly, a large percentage of guns with U.S. markings did come from the U.S., but they were a small fraction of the total number of guns confiscated by Mexican authorities.

How large was the discrepancy between the Obama administration’s lie and reality?

Mexico has more than 300,000 confiscated weapons locked in vaults. Mexico has asked the U.S. government to trace just a small fraction of those, including just 11,000 in 2007-2008, of which a little more than half — close to 6,000 — were successfully traced. This means roughly 5,000 of the 11,000 submitted could not be traced at all. Of those 6,000 guns that could be traced, 5,114 were traced to the U.S.

It is unknown how many of those traced weapons were purchased in U.S. gun shops, how many were stolen, and how many were Mexican military weapons sold to cartels by deserting Mexican soldiers.

A few thousand firearms out of more than 300,000 doesn’t make for a good crisis, so the Obama administration lied: again and again they pushed the 90 percent lie in the media, hoping to spur calls for gun control.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder tipped the administration’s hand just a little more than a month into Obama’s term, using cartel violence as an excuse to push for reinstatement of the failed Clinton-era “assault weapons” ban. The ban, part of the 1994 crime bill, outlawed several firearms by name and limited the number of certain other cosmetic features that politicians thought were scary, even though they did not have anything to do with a firearm’s rate of fire or accuracy. Examples of the cosmetic features banned included bayonet lugs, pistol grips, and barrel shrouds. Manufacturers released the exact same firearms, sans the offending cosmetics, the very next day with no reduction in lethality. The result of this pseudo-ban was to make these firearms more attractive to Americans, who purchased these weapons in far greater numbers than they ever had before.

[NCTexan]

Within weeks of President Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009, newly installed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder began to craft the meme that Mexican drug cartel violence was rooted in what they view as lax American gun laws.

 

If only we could tighten the laws, criminals would stop breaking them.

 

It's sure worked in Chicago, Detroit, and DC... then it ought to work in more civilized areas like Mexico.

[Chickadee]

Within weeks of President Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009, newly installed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder began to craft the meme that Mexican drug cartel violence was rooted in what they view as lax American gun laws.

If only we could tighten the laws, criminals would stop breaking them.

 

It's sure worked in Chicago, Detroit, and DC... then it ought to work in more civilized areas like Mexico.

NCT, are you stating Mexico is civilized? And I would like to know how the words 'Chicago', 'Detroit', 'DC' and 'Mexico' actually relate to the word, 'civilized'? Just wondering . . . IMO, not much civility left in any of them.

 

PS: I know there are lots and lots of wonderful, civilized people in all those areas, but we're talking about the extremes of corrupt activity, right?

[NCTexan]

PS: I know there are lots and lots of wonderful, civilized people in all those areas, but we're talking about the extremes of corrupt activity, right?

Chickadee! Sure there are lots of good people in all of those places.

 

They also all have a significant lawless and violent segment of their populations that thumb their noses at the law. (all laws)

 

Chicago/DC/Oakland/(you fill in the blank with the liberal run city of your choice) all have the same failed solutions. They don't recognize that more draconian gun laws have no effect the lawless.

 

This is the liberal solution of failing to acknowledge the disease (and it's causes)... then making a show of putting a band-aid on the symptom.

 

It's just amazing to me that the Chicago/WhiteHouse hasn't learned a thing from their years of failures in their own backyard.

[Valin]

Within weeks of President Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009, newly installed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder began to craft the meme that Mexican drug cartel violence was rooted in what they view as lax American gun laws.

 

 

Mega-Scandal: Was ‘Gunwalker’ a PR Op for Gun Control?

 

The obvious answer is that Gunwalker’s objective was never intended to be a “legitimate law enforcement interest.” Instead, it appears that ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Department of Justice senior executives specifically created an operation that was designed from the outset to arm Mexican narco-terrorists and increase violence substantially along both sides of the Southwest border.

 

Success was measured not by the number of criminals being incarcerated, but by the number of weapons transiting the border and the violence those weapons caused. An ATF manager was “delighted” when Gunwalker guns started showing up at drug busts. It would be entirely consistent with this theory if DOJ communications reflected the approval of the ATF senior officials they were colluding with — but as we know, Holder’s Department of Justice refuses to cooperate.

(Snip)

 

More Here

[Chickadee]

It's just amazing to me that the Chicago/WhiteHouse hasn't learned a thing from their years of failures in their own backyard.

Yep!

[Evad]

So, Bambi tries an end run around the Constitution (2nd Amendment) and it blows up in his face.

Surprise, surprise!