Eric Holder's sour note on 'assault weapons'

March 2, 1:11 PMCharlotte Gun Rights ExaminerPaul Valone

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In the grand opera of gun control, diva Sarah Brady’s plaintive arias for “children killed by guns,” however overplayed, at least brought a tear to the eye. Not so, alas, for the tone deaf Obama administration, whose lead baritone, Attorney General Eric Holder, recently belted out a seriously sour note in calling for re-implementation of the so-called “assault weapon” ban.

“As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” said Holder, carefully ignoring how candidate Obama insisted, “I am not going to take your guns away.”

Yet while Sarah and wheelchair-bound hubby Jim performed a heart-rending duet for the 1996 Democratic National Convention …

Sarah: “We can eliminate random gun violence. And we can preserve the American dream for all of us. But please, don't do it for Sarah and Jim Brady.”

Jim: “Do it for all our children.”

… the best Holder’s tin ear can muster is: “Do it for Mexican drug lords.” He avoided those words, of course, saying instead: “I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”

But Holder was trying to join the chorus of media and Democrats singing the laments of Mexicans beset by violence from drug runners and kidnappers fueled, they say, by military-style guns smuggled from the U.S.

The New York Times eloquently, if inaccurately, alleged:

“A vast arms bazaar is rampant along the four border states, enabled by porous to nonexistent American gun laws. Straw buyers can pick up three or four high-powered war rifles from one of more than 6,600 border dealers and hand them off to smugglers. They easily return to Mexico, where gun laws are far less permissive.”

Adds ABC News:

“Mexican government officials have complained that the availability of sophisticated guns from the United States have [sic] emboldened drug traffickers to fight over access routes into the U.S.” (Presumably, “fight over access routes” means killing each other. How unfortunate.)

Beyond the failure of gun control in Mexico, as elsewhere, one should consider that this is the same border Americans have demanded the U.S. close for some time now. It is, in fact, the same border the Mexican government has been instructing its people how to breach. If both governments are unhappy with the result, perhaps they should actually close it.

As always, the gun ban movement sticks to the original script written by Violence Policy Center director Josh Sugarmann in a internal memo:

“The semi-automatic weapon’s menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons - anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun - can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”

In truth, Mexican violence is perpetrated not by semi-automatic “assault weapons” but instead by real military arms. Says a State Department travel warning: "Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades.”

“Automatic weapons” (i.e. machine guns) and grenades have been restricted in the U.S. since 1934. That Mexican authorities refuse to release serial numbers of seized guns suggests that rather than coming from the U.S., guns -- and smugglers themselves -- hail from the Mexican military.

Equally noteworthy is a Bureau of Justice Statistics report entitled “Firearm Use by Offenders” which found that only 1.7% of armed criminals in the U.S. used military-style semi-automatic firearms while committing crimes, meaning no domestic rationale can be found for banning them.

That such firearms cause problems in Mexico stems from corruption and lawlessness pervading its society. According to Holder, however, that is now your fault.

Alas, Holder sang out of turn: Recalling 1994, when politicians last performed the “assault weapon” opera and voters responded by burning down the Democratic theater, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promptly ran screaming for the exits.

“On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now,” waffled Pelosi.

"Sen. Reid would oppose an effort [to] reinstate the ban if the Senate were to vote on it in the future," backpedaled Reid spokesman Jim Manley.

Understand that the Obama/Holder gaffe is one of timing, not intent. Democrat Congressional leaders would cheerfully ban every gun you own; they’re just avoiding a repeat of 1994. While the curtain has closed on Act I, this performance ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

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