Brady Campaign says permanent BATFE director would have stopped 'Gunwalker'

"Anti-gun groups silent on ‘Project Gunwalker,’" said National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea, back in late February, and he was quite right. Actually, some of us were wondering about that even earlier, when various anti-gun groups expressed "outrage" and "disgust" over the administration's decision not to force the proposed multiple rifle purchase reporting requirement through as an "emergency," but said nothing about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) actively facilitating the illegal movement of thousands of firearms to Mexico.

There was, within the past week or so, a bit of movement on that front, when the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) briefly acknowledged, on Facebook and Twitter, at least that there were allegations of "Gunwalker" (now a Wikipedia-recognized term) shenanigans. With the "Gunwalker" scandal now growing--seemingly by the hour--bigger and deeper, that would clearly have to change. At some point, "gun control" advocates would have to publicly confront the very credible allegations that the very agency upon which they wish to bestow vastly more funding and power, in order to reduce "gun violence," has itself sanctioned exactly the gun trafficking that the anti-gun groups claim is a serious enough problem to warrant yet more gun laws restricting American citizens.

That point seems to have come yesterday, when Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke, along with NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, were interviewed about the scandal on Fox News (see sidebar video). Helmke put a brave face on it, and started by explaining to us what the "basic problem" is:

The basic problem is that the ATF has not had a permanent head in five years. The person that George W. Bush had proposed was blocked in the Senate; the person that President Obama proposed is blocked in the Senate. ATF has no leadership, nobody calling the shots; they have very little resources.

Oh? Acting Director Kenneth Melson has so little power that he can't direct the bureau to . . . not pressure gun dealers into going ahead with obvious "straw sales," against the dealers' better judgment? What, then, are the responsibilities and powers of an acting director? What, indeed, is the purpose of an acting director, if not to . . . act as director? There would not have been a "Project Gunwalker," without Melson's authorization, and if he were somehow powerless to stop it, that would mean that it was forced on him, against his will, from higher up in the Department of Justice (and there can be no realistic doubt that the operation was known, and at the very least tacitly approved, further up in that department), by people who would outrank a permanent director, as well.

Besides, are we to believe that Andrew Traver would have been the director whose integrity and rectitude would have compelled him to slam the door on "Gunwalker," when he is known to have lied to the public, in support of an agenda to ban so-called "assault weapons," an agenda that looks to have been a large part of the motivation behind "Gunwalker" in the first place? This is, of course, without even having gotten to wondering about whether this scandal is playing a major role in Sen. Patrick Leahy's apparent reluctance to begin the confirmation process with Traver.

For good measure, Helmke then seized on what shall be known here as the "Underpants Gnome defense," whereby we are to cut the BATFE some slack, because what they were trying to accomplish with the gun trafficking is (somehow) bring down the "kingpins" in Mexico. Says Helmke:

I think what the ATF was trying to do here is capture the kingpins, the folks that were actually behind these purchases of all these guns, but that's tougher to do after the horse has gotten out of the barn.

It's not "tougher to do," Paul--it's impossible to catch "kingpins," by allowing their low-level proxies to buy guns, and recovering those guns after their low-level henchmen have killed people with them.

If that's the best the anti-gun groups can do in responding to the "Gunwalker" scandal, they probably can't be blamed for not wanting to talk about it until left with no choice whatsoever. Who would not hate to walk into a debate, with so little in the way of rhetorical ammunition.

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre (who tends to get very little praise here at St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner), by the way, made a pretty good case for the argument that "Gunwalker" was indeed intended, at very high levels in the Obama administration, to provide the justification for more restrictive gun laws.

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