During Attorney General Eric Holder's sworn testimony before Congress today, Democrats in one accord not only defended Holder's handling of the Fast and Furious scandal but proposed more gun control and more money for the ATF as means of addressing the problem.
Holder and the Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform blasted Republicans on the committee for questioning Holder's integrity, although it has been shown that he has lied to Congress on at least two separate occasions. The Justice Department also lied to Congress.
Rather than addressing the real problem at the core of Fast and Furious--corruption within the Justice Department and the ATF in approving an operation to allow thousands of U.S. guns to walk into Mexico as a vehicle by which to call for more gun control--Democrats on the committee instead have followed the script set in 2009 by those in the Obama Administration who conceived and implemented the illegal scheme.
That script was to use the guns found in Mexico as proof for their discredited claim that "90% of the guns used by the drug cartels come from the U.S." Then, according to the script, a call would be issued for massive new federal gun control laws.
This is precisely what Holder and House Democrats did today during the hearing, thus proving the contention of the ATF whistleblower agents from the beginning that the entire scheme was concocted as a means to make a case for more gun control.
Committee member Gerry Connolly, D-Virginia, called for a new federal law on 'gun trafficking' that would place yet another burden on hundreds of U.S. gun dealers. Connolly further called for millions of extra tax dollars to go to expanding the ATF, especially in areas such as Arizona and other states near the southern border.
Neither of these proposals, say critics, actually addresses the problem. The problem is clearly not with gun dealers. They did only what they were told to do by the ATF in selling a massive amount of guns to straw purchasers so that the agency could conduct its illegal smuggling scheme. The problem, rather, is the ATF itself and its supervisory oversight in the Department of Justice.
Gun store owners report that the ATF is already too powerful and too intrusive into their businesses. Bullying by ATF agents is commonplace, according to gun store owners who have been willing to talk.
Further, at the heart of the problem is the refusal of the Obama Administration to secure the southern border. Without strong measures to secure the border, to stop the flow of illegal aliens into the country, and to halt the lax practices of allowing goods to flow back and forth from Mexico to the U.S. unabated, then there is no gun control law that will solve any of the problems uncovered by the Fast and Furious scandal.
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