David Ignatius, in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post, says the gun lobby is holding Mexico hostage. Forgive me but I thought it was the drug cartels and narco-terrorists that were doing this.
Ignatius blames both the Arizona illegal alien law and the lack of a permanent director for ATF on the gun lobby. I know it is a stretch but that is what the Washington Post pays him to do. He claims that Arizona enacted SB 1070 because it was concerned about the violence from the Mexican drug cartels who in turn get their guns from the US which is because we have such lax gun laws which in turn are because Congress and the Obama Administration are afraid of the gun lobby. I’m sure we can all see the logic there. Not!
Likewise, there is no permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives because the Administration is not willing to take the heat of a confirmation hearing. Ignatius follows this with the obligatory quote from Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign.
“The absence of a chief has hamstrung ATF’s ability to aggressively target gun trafficking rings or corrupt firearms dealers and has demoralized its agents,” Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote in a June 10 letter to Obama. Nearly two months later, the job is still empty, and there are no leading candidates.
Obviously, neither Ignatius nor Helmke saw my post on Andy Traver despite the fact that someone at DOJ was doing a Google search and found it. Nor have they ever gone to the website CleanUpATF.org where the demoralization of ATF field agents is usually traced to incompetent managers and the Office of Legal Counsel.
The rest of the op-ed goes into all the usual (and fallacious) arguments about 80% of confiscated weapons come from the United States, etc.
I guess it is worth reading if you have been suffering from low blood pressure lately and need a boost. Gun owners who have hypertension should avoid it at all costs.
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