Month: June 2011

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“Felony Stupid”

June 16, 2011 by 2 Comments

If you haven’t heard or seen a good rant in a while, here is your chance. The C-Span video below is from the third portion of today’s hearings held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

After Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich reads his prepared testimony, Chairman Darrell Issa starts to light into him with a vengeance. It was beautiful to see Weich squirm knowing he had to sit there and take it. The relevant parts of the video run from the 7:15 mark up to about 12:47 mark. If the video was able to be excerpted – or if I knew how! – I would have presented that alone.

I was disgusted by the obsequious apology from Ranking Member Cummings to Weich when it was Cummings turn to speak. He certainly never apologized for his behavior in many of the hearings he held when he was Chairman of the Committee and it was not his place to apologize for Issa’s comments. I think darn near anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis would have said much worse and would not have been as restrained as Chairman Issa.

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Special Prosecutor Time?

June 16, 2011 by

Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens’ Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms thinks the time is right for a Special Prosecutor in the Project Gunwalker scandal. He may well be right. The CCRKBA’s release is below.

BELLEVUE, WA – Following more than four hours of testimony before a House committee today by a U.S. Senator, government whistleblowers and relatives of a slain Border Patrol agent, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is calling for the immediate suspension, without pay, of all supervisors involved in a controversial gunrunning sting operation, including the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and his deputies, and the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and determine who initiated this project and who approved it.

Operation Fast and Furious was the ATF’s botched gun trafficking investigation in Arizona that allowed more than 2,000 guns to be moved into a criminal pipeline leading straight to Mexico. Today’s stunning revelations under oath by ATF agents before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform suggest there were willful violations of ATF policy and procedures that were allegedly ordered by supervisors in Phoenix with the knowledge of the agency hierarchy in Washington, D.C.

“Today’s hearing revealed one outrage after another,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb. “Everybody who was involved in this debacle must be held accountable. That can only happen if there is an independent prosecutor, someone who cannot be influenced by the Justice Department.

“It is clear that members of Congress have been stonewalled,” he continued. “We share Congressman Darrell Issa’s outrage at the conduct of the Justice Department, and particularly the ATF. They’re supposed to be preventing criminals from getting firearms, not facilitating it.

“We think an independent prosecutor is important for another reason,” Gottlieb added. “Attempts by some members of the House Oversight committee to politicize this investigation are disappointing. Finding the truth about how this operation went wrong is not a launch pad for some new gun control effort. Don’t blame our gun laws and gun rights for the criminal acts of people who should have been arrested before anybody got killed.

“For the present,” he concluded, “the ATF should be immediately put under the command of people who clearly understand that it is their job to prevent illegal gun trafficking, instead of allowing it to happen. There has been a serious lack of leadership and accountability, and that needs to be fixed today.”

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Irony

June 15, 2011 by

Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, in his written testimony submitted for the hearings into Operation Fast and Furious, relies upon a position taken by the head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan years for refusing to provide all the documents requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The most basic justification for the policy follows from the Constitution’s careful separation of legislative and executive powers, the purpose of which is to protect individual liberty. As Charles J. Cooper, the Assistant Attorney General heading the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration, explained in 1986, providing a congressional committee with sensitive, Executive Branch information about an ongoing law enforcement investigation would put Congress in an inappropriate position of exercising influence over or pressure on the investigation or possible prosecution. See Congressional Requests, 10 Op. O.L.C. at 76.

In what can only be called a delicious irony, the most anti-gun administration in recent memory has had to rely upon the writings of pro-gun attorney Charles J. Cooper to defend their position. Cooper and his law firm Cooper and Kirk serve as the attorneys for a number of the Second Amendment lawsuits brought by the National Rifle Association. Among the more notable include Benson v. Chicago which challenges the New Chicago Gun Law and both of the D’Cruz cases in Texas.

(edited)

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NSSF On The Feinstein-Schumer-Whitehouse “Report”

June 15, 2011 by

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) issued a so-called report on Monday blaming American guns for the violence in Mexico. Frankly, I think it was timed to draw media attention from the Gunwalker hearings that started that afternoon.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has responded to that report and takes apart their numbers. Rather than showing 70% of guns being traced from Mexico to the U.S., it actually shows a decline in the number of American firearms being traced by Mexican authorities.

Anti-Gun Report Shows DECLINE in Number of US Firearms Being Traced to Mexico
June 15, 2011
By Larry Keane

Once again anti-gun legislators are attempting to misrepresent firearm tracing data, though this time, with declining numbers and a public wary of political posturing, it may just backfire on them.

A report (“Halting US Firearms Trafficking to Mexico“) released Monday by a trio of anti-gun senators including Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) appears to show the number of firearms that have been recovered in Mexico and traced to the United States as actually declining in recent years from an unsubstantiated 90 percent to, now, an unsubstantiated 70 percent.

It is important to note that these percentages do not reflect the total number of firearms recovered. In fact, in a letter to Sen. Feinstein discussing this very report, ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson admitted, “There are no United States Government sources that maintain any record of the total number of criminal firearms seized in Mexico.”

So to be clear, the 70 percent claim relates only to the very small number of traced firearms – not the total number of firearms recovered. And it’s no surprise that so many come from the United States. We have a very good system for tracing firearms through serial numbers and purchase records (some countries don’t trace them at all). Mexico recognizes this fact and submits for tracing only those firearms that it believes would likely prove trace positive.

Earlier this year a report by the independent research group STRATFOR noted that less than 12 percent of the total number of guns seized in Mexico during 2008 had been verified as coming from the United States. STRATFOR cited a June 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noting:

30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008.
Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the ATF for tracing.
Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF.
Of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.

The Feinstein report follows an update to the U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico Report issued by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. According to that update, Mexican authorities have submitted trace requests for “tens of thousands of firearms” to the ATF. However, the ATF has stated that many of these requests are duplicative, with some firearms being resubmitted for tracing five times or more. Moreover, the update notes that 75 percent of the firearm traces are not successful and that only eight percent lead to an investigation. Furthermore, as ATF has repeatedly stated, the tracing of a firearm (or the opening of an investigation) in no way indicates criminal wrong-doing by either the retailer or the first purchaser of the firearm.

The Wilson report also notes that most of the traced firearms were originally sold at retail more than five years earlier. The report doesn’t say how much earlier, but ATF has previously said that firearms traced from Mexico were on average 14 years old. This demonstrates that of the small percentage of guns that do come from the United States, these firearms have not been purchased recently.

Despite attempts by anti-gun legislators to utilize these reports as leverage for pushing gun control, no one should be under any illusions; the United States is no more the source of 70 percent of the weapons used by the Mexican cartels than it is 90 percent. These numbers only allege to relate to the small percentage of seized and traceable firearms submitted to the ATF.

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Oversight Committee Report On Project Gunwalker

June 15, 2011 by

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has released their report on Operation Fast and Furious. The highlights of the report are below:

Report: Four ATF Agents Working on Controversial Operation ‘Fast and Furious’ Tell their Story

Agents say DOJ still being untruthful about efforts to let guns ‘walk’ into hands of drug cartels

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) today released a report, “The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents.” The report includes testimony from four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents offering firsthand accounts about the controversial Operation Fast and Furious that allowed suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns. Two of the approximately 2,000 guns that ATF let criminals walk away with were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

“ATF agents have shared chilling accounts of being ordered to stand down as criminals in Arizona walked away with guns headed for Mexican drug cartels,” said Rep. Issa. “With the clinical precision of a lab experiment, the Justice Department kept records of weapons they let walk and the crime scenes where they next appeared. To agents’ shock, preventing loss of life was not the primary concern.”

“These agents have risked their lives working for the ATF and they’ve risked their careers by coming forward to speak the truth about a dangerous strategy that was doomed from the start,” Sen. Grassley said. “The report shows the street agents’ perspective on this risky policy to let guns walk. It should help people who are wondering what really happened during Operation Fast and Furious understand why we are continuing to investigate.”

Highlights of the report include:

  • The supervisor of Operation Fast and Furious was “jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about” walked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico according to an ATF agent. (p. 37)
  • Another ATF agent told the committee about a prediction he made a year ago that “someone was going to die” and that the gunwalking operation would be the subject of a Congressional investigation. (p. 24)
  • The shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords created a “state of panic” within the group conducting the operation as they initially feared a “walked” gun might have been used. (p. 38)
  • One Operation Fast and Furious Agent: “I cannot see anyone who has one iota of concern for human life being okay with this …” (p. 27)
  • An ATF agent predicted to committee investigators that more deaths will occur as a result of Operation Fast and Furious. (p.39)
  • Multiple agents told the committee that continued assertions by Department of Justice Officials that guns were not knowingly “walked” and that DOJ tried to stop their transport to Mexico are clearly untruthful. (p. 45-50)

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s staff report entitled “The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents” is embedded below:

ATF Report
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ATF Leadership Not Ignorant Of Gunwalking

June 15, 2011 by

In his opening statement, Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) revealed that the upper management of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was intimately aware of what was going on with Operation Fast and Furious.

The documents can be found here.

George Gillett, Jr. was the ASAC of the Phoenix Field Division. When he saw that he was going to be thrown under the bus, he became a whistle-blower. The impact of that decision can be seen in the documents which I assume he furnished the Committee. As I said back in April, Gillett becoming a whistle-blower was the equivalent of a John Mitchell, H.R. Halderman, or John Ehrlichman rolling over on Richard Nixon during the Watergate Scandal.


WASHINGTON, D.C. – Moments ago in his opening statement at today’s hearing, Operation Fast and Furious: Reckless Decisions, Tragic Outcomes, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) released three e-mails detailing the intimate involvement of ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson and Acting Deputy Director Bill Hoover in Operation Fast and Furious:

• The first e-mail from March 10, 2010, to Operation Fast and Furious Group VII Leader David Voth indicates that the two most senior leaders in ATF, Acting Director Kenneth Melson, and Deputy Director Billy Hoover, were “being briefed weekly on” Operation Fast and Furious. The document shows that both Melson and Hoover were “keenly interested in case updates.”

• A second e-mail from March 12, 2010, shows that Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations William McMahon was so excited about Fast and Furious that he received a special briefing on the program in Phoenix – scheduled for a mere 45 minutes after his plane landed.

• A third – and perhaps the most disturbing – e-mail from April 12, 2010, indicates that Acting Director Melson was very much in the weeds with Operation Fast and Furious. After a detailed briefing of the program by the ATF Phoenix Field Division, Acting Director Melson had a plethora of follow-up questions that required additional research to answer. As the document indicates, Mr. Melson was interested in the IP Address for hidden cameras located inside cooperating gun shops. With this information, Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and – himself – watch a live feed of the straw buyers entering the gun stores to purchase dozens of AK-47 variants.

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HB 650 Passes North Carolina Senate

June 15, 2011 by 2 Comments

HB 650 which amends various firearms laws and contains the Castle Doctrine passed its 2nd and 3rd Readings last night in the North Carolina State Senate. It is unclear currently whether it was a voice vote or a roll-call vote. This means HB 650 and the Castle Doctrine have passed both houses of the General Assembly. All that remains is reconciling the differences and we in North Carolina will have the Castle Doctrine once the bill is signed by Governor Bev Perdue.

Sean at An NC Gun Blog reports that there is one small amendment dealing with storing firearms in a locked vehicle by a legislator or legislative employee.

Having scanned the entire bill, the repeal of the emergency powers gun ban under Chapter 36A of the General Statutes was not put in this bill as an amendment. As a number of posts since last Thursday have made clear, any such amendment would have mooted Bateman v. Perdue. That case challenged the constitutionality of the ban on off-premises possession of firearms and ammunition during declared States of Emergency.

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Citizens Committee Weighs In On S. 594 And Bateman

June 15, 2011 by

The open letter sent out this afternoon by Paul Valone has now been slightly rewritten and is joined in by Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (and the head of the Second Amendment Foundation).

The CalGuns Foundation sent out a tweet to it followers this evening stating that Bateman v. Perdue is of national importance.

URGENT ACTION ALERT

ACT NOW TO PASS CASTLE DOCTRINE & PARKS CARRY

In the shell game characterizing the North Carolina legislative process, a modified HB 650 passed the Senate Judiciary II Committee today and heads for the floor for its Second and Third Readings, quite probably tomorrow. With the legislature likely to recess on Friday, time is short. YOU MUST RESPOND IMMEDIATELY.

In its current version, HB 650 contains Castle Doctrine, parks carry, enhanced concealed handgun reciprocity, improvements to our concealed handgun law, and far more.

Sadly, HB 650 – and your rights – face a threat not from legislators, but from the efforts of an organization ostensibly dedicated to defending the Second Amendment. Below is an open letter to North Carolina gun rights supporters – but equally vital to gun rights supporters everywhere – which explains the problem.

OPEN LETTER FROM PAUL VALONE AND ALAN GOTTLIEB:

IS SB 594 THE RIGHT BILL?

To: North Carolina Gun Rights Supporters

From: GRNC President F. Paul Valone

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb

Members of the NRA recently received postcards urging them to call NC Senate leadership in support of Senate Bill 594, described in the postcard as “an emergency powers bill [to] ensure that our Right to Keep and Bear Arms cannot be suspended” during declared states of emergency.

But while North Carolina’s state of emergency law is indeed a problem, SB 594 is the wrong solution. Worse, it seems to be a short-sighted effort by the NRA to grab credit for what some would have you believe to be a victory.

Why? Because it would render moot – and cause the dismissal – of crucial litigation to expand recognition of the Second Amendment in the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is Bateman v. Perdue. Together with the Michael Bateman, Virgil Green, Forrest Minges, and the Second Amendment Foundation, GRNC is working with Alan Gura – the winner of DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago – the cases which led the Supreme Court to affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Although GRNC has made numerous entreaties to NRA representatives to back the Bateman case, they have apparently fallen on deaf ears. Just as the NRA tried to derail the DC v. Heller decision in its early stages through its attempts to repeal the DC gun ban, now it apparently wants gun owners to regard GRNC – the state’s most vocal and effective gun rights organization – as somehow “anti-gun” for realizing that SB 594 is a short-sighted and misguided vehicle to advance gun rights.

Gun rights supporters have two choices:

Help the NRA achieve a narrow, short-sighted win by amending HB 650 or other gun bills to include language from SB 594, the now-dead “state of emergency” bill; or

Help Gura, SAF and GRNC expand the interpretation of the Second Amendment, which will not only render North Carolina’s state of emergency law unconstitutional, but will advance gun rights for everyone, everywhere.

Don’t support GRNC. Don’t support CCRKBA. Don’t support the NRA. SUPPORT THE SECOND AMENDMENT! And do so by helping Bateman v. Perdue expand your right to keep and bear arms.

Armatissimi e liberissimi,

F. Paul Valone

President, Grass Roots North Carolina

Alan M. Gottlieb

Chairman, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

If you agree with this – and I hope you will – and you live in North Carolina, here is what you need to do:

IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED

  • Immediately all your state senator and tell him to pass HB 650 without amendments of any kind – especially to oppose efforts to add the contents SB 594; and
  • Immediately e-mail all members of the NC Senate with the message above.

CONTACT INFORMATION

You may find your NC STATE representative by going here:

http://www.grnc.org/contact_reps.htm

To e-mail all members of the Senate, use the following addresses:

Austin.Allran@ncleg.net, Tom.Apodaca@ncleg.net, Bob.Atwater@ncleg.net, Doug.Berger@ncleg.net, Phil.Berger@ncleg.net, Stan.Bingham@ncleg.net, Harris.Blake@ncleg.net, Dan.Blue@ncleg.net, Andrew.Brock@ncleg.net, Harry.Brown@ncleg.net, Peter.Brunstetter@ncleg.net, Debbie.Clary@ncleg.net, Daniel.Clodfelter@ncleg.net, Warren.Daniel@ncleg.net, Charlie.Dannelly@ncleg.net, Jim.Davis@ncleg.net, Don.East@ncleg.net, James.Forrester@ncleg.net, Linda.Garrou@ncleg.net, Thom.Goolsby@ncleg.net, Malcolm.Graham@ncleg.net, Rick.Gunn@ncleg.net, Kathy.Harrington@ncleg.net, Fletcher.Hartsell@ncleg.net, Ralph.Hise@ncleg.net, Neal.Hunt@ncleg.net, Brent.Jackson@ncleg.net, Clark.Jenkins@ncleg.net, Edward.Jones@ncleg.net, Ellie.Kinnaird@ncleg.net, Eric.Mansfield@ncleg.net, Floyd.McKissick@ncleg.net, Wesley.Meredith@ncleg.net, Martin.Nesbitt@ncleg.net, Buck.Newton@ncleg.net, Louis.Pate@ncleg.net, Jean.Preston@ncleg.net, William.Purcell@ncleg.net, Bill.Rabon@ncleg.net, Gladys.Robinson@ncleg.net, David.Rouzer@ncleg.net, Bob.Rucho@ncleg.net, Dan.Soucek@ncleg.net, Josh.Stein@ncleg.net, Richard.Stevens@ncleg.net, Jerry.Tillman@ncleg.net, Tommy.Tucker@ncleg.net, Don.Vaughan@ncleg.net, Michael.Walters@ncleg.net, Stan.white@ncleg.net

DELIVER THIS MESSAGE

In sending e-mails, use the subject line: “Pass HB 650 without amendments”

Dear Senator:

I strongly urge you to vote for HB 650: “Amend Various Gun Laws/Castle Doctrine” and to oppose ANY AND ALL amendments to the bill, however well-intentioned they may appear. The present contents of HB 650 have been voted on — and passed – in various versions by both the Senate and House. The bill’s passage is long overdue.

Efforts to amend gun-related legislation to include the contents of SB 594: “Firearms/State of Emergency” are misguided and short-sighted. Such an amendment would render moot the Bateman lawsuit filed by numerous plaintiffs, including Grass Roots North Carolina and the Second Amendment Foundation, and argued by famed gun rights lawyer Alan Gura, to expand the US Supreme Court interpretation of the Second Amendment.

As always, I will be monitoring your actions via Grass Roots North Carolina legislative alerts

Respectfully,