PITTSBURGH — With Congressional investigators now on the ground in Arizona, as reported by CBS News and this column, new revelations about the controversial “Project Gunrunner” and its Phoenix off-shoot, “Operation Fast and Furious” are anticipated during the National Rifle Association convention, which opens here tomorrow, but one thing is clear from documents and interviews: This strategy only goes back to 2009, after the Obama administration took charge.
Now that the “birth certificate” distraction has been removed, perhaps reporters will start concentrating on the far more serious questions surrounding the Gunrunner controversy.
AS CBS News reported Tuesday, the strategy of “letting guns walk” out of Southwest gun shops began in late 2009. The Bush administration left in January 2009. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been conducting “Gunrunner” activities on a limited basis prior to that, but the operation was dramatically expanded months after Obama administration officials, most notably Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had been discussing the number of U.S.-origin guns being recovered at Mexican narco-war crime scenes.
ATF insiders being interviewed in Arizona are among those who told CBS News that their own agency employed a controversial strategy beginning in late 2009 called "letting guns walk," to try to gather intelligence.—CBS News
There is a growing suspicion within the firearms community that ATF higher-ups wanted to flood Mexico with guns, just to boost their statistics on recovered guns, and thus justify demands for renewal and expansion of the ban on so-called “assault weapons.” Such a ban would also be permanent.
Congressman Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley have consistently complained about stonewalling. That they have dispatched their own investigators to Arizona further reinforces the serious nature of their inquiries, and their frustration with the ATF and Justice Department, which have remained uncooperative, citing their own on-going investigations.
That’s not good enough, according to sources close to these investigations.
With the NRA meeting this weekend in Pittsburgh, this expanding investigation will be a hot topic. The NRA and the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms have been highly critical of the ATF’s and Justice Department’s handling of this controversy.
CCRKBA’s Alan Gottlieb just returned from Arizona, and he will be in Pittsburgh for the convention. He is also hosting a reception for bloggers Saturday evening. Expected to attend are the two men who originally exposed the Gunrunner controversy, National Fun Rights Examiner David Codrea and independent blogger Mike Vanderboegh.
MEANWHILE, the Washington Times responded with a blistering editorial to a claim Tuesday by the Violence Policy Center that gun sales are down and fewer Americans are choosing to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Rather than comment, this column offers these paragraphs from the editorial:
Gun grabbers love statistics, especially when they’re misleading. The latest report from the Violence Policy Center (VPC) would have us believe that Americans are lined up at the recycling center ready to toss out their Glocks. The group claims that a firearm protected every other home in 1980 but only one out of three today. It’s a not-so-subtle attempt to convey the message that the anti-Second Amendment crowd is winning. “Despite the short-lived uptick in gun sales that occurred after the election of President Obama, the fact is that gun-free households are an increasing majority while gun-owning households are a shrinking minority,” said VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann in a statement Tuesday.
While Mr. Sugarmann is right to credit Mr. Obama as the greatest firearms salesman in world history, gun sales are not on the decline. For every $1 spent on ammunition, pistols, shotguns and rifles, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) pockets between 10 and 11 cents. According to ATF’s books, the gun industry made over $1 billion in extra revenue thanks to the president’s 2009 inauguration - a 45 percent increase. Since then, prices have fallen, so tax receipts are down - but gun sales are not...
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