Quote of the Day

Michael Bane in his Downrange Radio podcast, Episode 232 had a great comparison between the TV show Sons of Anarchy and the ATF at about the 11 minute mark.

If someone can tell me the difference between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Sons of Anarchy, I’d sure like to hear it. I don’t know if you’ve seen the show Sons of Anarchy – it’s a biker gang that runs guns. Gosh! I actually don’t understand the difference between Sons of Anarchy and ATF. They both run guns. They both don’t pay attention to the national borders. They both don’t care who the collateral damage is.

The Washington Post doesn’t think much of HR 822 – National Right-To-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 – if their editorial yesterday is any indication. As Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell notes, fundamental constitutional rights are not a buffet where you can pick and choose.

Oft times, ridicule rather than anger is the best way to deal with our opponents and Sebastian does an admirable job with this paraphrase of part of the Post editorial.

Many states already have agreements to recognize newspaper licenses from other jurisdictions. Virginia, for example, honors licenses from 27 other states that have similarly robust standards; Maryland, which strictly regulates what newspapers may be sold, and the District, which essentially prohibits it, do not recognize out-of-state licenses. These are legitimate choices that would be overridden by a federal legislature that too easily bends to the will of the news lobby. Nevada, a strong press-rights state, rescinded its agreement with Utah because Utah does not require training in acceptable viewpoints. Why should Congress to overrule that judgment?

The quote of the day comes from David Codrea. In his National Gun Rights Examiner column, he looks at the extreme reluctance of the elite or mainstream media to even acknowledge Operation Fast and Furious as a scandal. According to Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan, it isn’t officially a scandal until it makes the front page of the Washington Post and the reporter uses the word scandal.

So—if the only “official” media outlets willing to call “Gunwalker” a “scandal” are some jerkwater paper in racist, anti-immigrant Arizona, the Teabagger/Troglodyte-appealing Faux News and a CBS blog that isn‘t even getting air time on the actual network news program anymore (hey, I’m just trying to get into the mindset of the elite information gatekeepers), what chance do we flyover knuckledraggers have of getting the mighty Pravda on the Potomac to call an international criminal conspiracy resulting in untold human deaths and reaching across bureaus, agencies and departments and layers of lawyers at least to the Cabinet level a “scandal”?

ATF Special Agent Vince Cefalu was interviewed on the DemocracyNow radio show yesterday. Mr. Cefalu has been a ardent critic of ATF management for years and has been retaliated against more than once for being a whistleblower. He is one of the founders of the website CleanUpATF.org. In his interview yesterday, he made the following comment about the guns that walked in Operation Fast and Furious.

So we allowed these guns to go, continue on, in the hopes of establishing some sort of chain, or this iron pipeline, which was so far from the truth, but we were never going to be able to follow it to fruition. … So, the only way to track those guns were to find them at the crime scenes or (on) dead bodies.

I think that about says it all.

Sheriff Jim Wilson puts the government’s raid on Gibson guitars in perspective:

The DOJ doesn’t have time to respond to the gun-running scandal, it’s too busy going after Gibson Guitars!