U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Selling weapons south of the border is big business — and America’s loose gun laws are also devastating for Mexico,” Seth Harp declares in a Rolling Stone hit piece on the right to keep and bear arms. He’s picking up where the gun-grabbers left off before their lies blaming incomplete citizen disarmament being responsible for Mexican cartel violence were interrupted by the exposure of Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking, “ which tellingly, he does not see fit to even mention.
I trust that surprised no one…? After all, there’s an agenda to advance here, and Rolling Stone has always been one of its most transparent promoters.
As for what those “loose gun laws” are, evidently they’re referring to the fact that criminals can find ways to get around the strict ones. In this case, the “gun law” violations are tied to a retired police officer, from the very class of citizens gun-grabbers tell us are the “Only Ones” we can trust with guns. Add to that their main subject was “a licensed gun dealer since 2007, and had acquired additional federal licenses to manufacture ammunition and possess machine guns.”
One wonders if any of the people swallowing this have ever even seen the hoops a citizen has to jump through to do all that, let alone tried to qualify themselves. It’s fair to ask how many readers of propaganda masked as investigative journalism are aware of the heightened scrutiny with opportunities for ATF to destroy lives and livelihoods. Those include not just deliberate criminal acts, but regulatory infractions and paperwork “violations.” Adverse actions can often require the resources of major corporations alleged to have run afoul of the regs to appeal – the little guy doesn’t stand a chance.
Still, the best-laid schemes don’t account for a criminal who intends to ignore the laws. So Rolling Stone sets its readers to chase an M-134 minigun red herring designed to scare everyone with the awesomeness of the weapon. The gullible are then led to a “conclusion” that only a delusional moron or a bald-face liar could offer with a straight face:
“As it turns out, guns are less tightly regulated in America than money orders.”
And:
“[I]n America there is no comprehensive federal law against firearms trafficking…”
What they’re doing, among other things, is setting up the rights swindle for “universal background checks” (deemed ineffective by a National Institute of Justice summary unless paired with registration), and eliminating the Tiahrt amendment (which even ATF and the Fraternal Order of Police oppose). What they’re purposely ignoring, among other things, is that “straw purchasing” already illegal and that arms exports are very tightly controlled – or would be if it’s not for the government itself being involved in violations. That makes Rolling Stone’s obvious exclusion of all things “gunwalking” so outrageously absurd.
Then again, doing so would not advance a narrative the gun-grabbers and the media have been trying to exploit into a demand for new gun bans. It set them back when their efforts to blame the right to arms for Mexican atrocities were derailed by Fast and Furious exposures.
I’d date the Obama administration’s trial balloon for that tactic back to February 2009, when then-Attorney General Eric Holder floated a new “assault weapons” ban, using as one justification that “ it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.” Having been signaled their talking points, the media was quick to pick them up and totally distort reality to spread the lie that “American gun sellers supply the cartels with 95 to 100 percent of their guns.”
That was reluctantly reduced to 90 percent, then 85, and then 80, until it was demonstrated unequivocally that those percentages were total bull and based only on numbers submitted by Mexico to the U.S. to trace, only a fraction of total guns seized. It wasn’t until that was substantiated by a much more wide-reaching voice than mine, one that couldn’t be conveniently ignored, that the gun-grabbers abandoned the narrative they started and disingenuously dismissed challenges to their own numbers as “a red herring.”
Then Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered, it was reported that the guns used in the attack had been “walked,” and that the purpose of doing that (unlike the insupportable “botched gun sting” misdirection the media still uses) was, per an ATF source, “to pad the statistics.” That means cynical minds were counting on walked guns being recovered at crime scenes, meaning they expected people would be dying just so they could make a media case.
Here’s the thing: Certainly some firearms are being smuggled by small-time operators across the border—drugs and human beings have flowed unimpeded for years.
Does anyone believe the cartels are dependent on small retail purchases of semi-autos with added costs of paying straw purchasers along with shipping costs and smuggling risks? Especially when we’re constantly “treated” to scenes of carnage involving full-auto weapons, grenades, and other ordnance? (As an aside, it’s curious how those screaming the loudest about banning guns just as loudly condemn border controls.) After all, we’ve seen how many of the weapons are obtained from smuggling operations across Mexico’s southern border, and how many others come from procurements approved for export to corrupt government enforcement agencies. (Where the hell do people think Los Zetas came from?)
The prevailing narrative just does not make sense — economic or otherwise.
Back to Fast and Furious, it did achieve one of its goals: The four border states multiple long gun sale reporting requirements, as if that’s going to stop a thing. And surprise, surprise, that wasn’t “enough” and the grabbers want more.
Meanwhile, even though a great show as made of holding hearings and Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress, no one has been held accountable and punished, even though a review of those arms export regulations (that are, per Rolling Stone, easier to comply with than getting a money order) makes it clear the State Department under Hillary Clinton either authorized the “gunwalking” or else ATF handlers who deliberately allowed it “induced” or “willfully caused” the violations.
No matter. Now that no one is paying attention anymore, the narrative can pick up again with anything challenging it safely ignored, just as before. And if the Democrats win in November, expect the voices blaming U.S. gun laws for Mexican cartel violence to grow even louder, with any mention of Fast and Furious dismissed as a conspiracy theory pushed by haters and anti-government extremists.
That’s one reason why the Trump administration should welcome new questions from the Mexican government on how “gunwalking” was allowed to happen, which is naturally being dismissed by Democrat apparatchiks as a “badly disguised ‘stunt’.” I especially like the suggestion over at Instapundit to “extradite Eric Holder.”
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.