To stem the flow of guns to Mexico, federal firearms regulators are proposing an emergency requirement that certain gun dealers along the southwestern border report bulk sales of so-called assault weapons beginning as soon as January.
I am sincerely hoping this seals the fate of Jimmy Carter, the Second Coming, in the 2012 election. As I’ve said, I’m willing to do nothing for Mexico.
UPDATE: Also notice Obama is taking his cues from Bloomberg’s Blueprint for screwing gun owners. This reinforces Michael Bloomberg being the biggest threat to gun rights out there today. The Brady organization is a joke at this point. Bloomberg is still someone to watch out for.
Here we go. This worries me because I suspect many gun owners simply will not care about this incremental step.
How about this: as soon as all firearms, including those full automatic assault rifles and RPGs, supposedly under the control of Mexican police and military are audited and found to be where they are supposed to be, we can start worrying about guns bought in Texas and taken south.
Sure it is a tu quoque argument but if they can do it why can’t I?
We should give a rifle & a box of shells to every illegal alien we catch on the border & send them home with them. Then Mexico might take their own obligations to secure the border from both sides seriously, as opposed to doing things like printing maps for would-be invaders like they do now.
Honestly, it seems closer to the doctrine of unclean hands than a tu quoque argument. They want us to give up our rights to solve a problem which is most likely – or at least in greater part – a result of their own failures, but refuse to address those failures themselves. They are acting in bad faith.
You’re right. They need to first show evidence (real evidence, not the cooked up garbage they’ve been showing) that border-state sales are actually a significant part of the problem, and that the defections and infiltration of their own military and police forces are not a greater part of the problem, before they have any justification for asking us to forfeit our own rights for their benefit.
I doubt that any random “self-respecting” drug goon in Mexico wants a semi-automatic “assault weapon”. I’d say they prefer full auto, real assault rifles. And those are hardly available as bulk sales.
Those people have almost nothing that could be bought here legally, or even stolen from real people or dealers. This is such a blatant, cooked up excuse to steal our rights. I’m glad I’m just about ready.
Can you say de-fund? Yes…it’s time to de-fund the bastards; along with a whole lot of other alphabet soup agencies.
You know… this really doesn’t worry me. After all, all that is going to result is no reports at all… because they won’t be making any “bulk sales” of these weapons then – even if they are now.
I suspect they will wind up with egg on their faces when it’s revealed that there are no bulk sales on the border. Well there would be if the media were doing their job and not just parroting the official talking points…
1. By their own admission, ATF has overstated the “trafficking” problem and deliberately mislead Congress and the American People. Between 2008 and 2010, ATF quoted 90% of guns seized in Mexico came from the United States. In September 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a draft report critical of Project Gunrunner, followed by a final version in November, 2010. The OIG analysis of ATF data shows, of the guns submitted for tracing, a much lower percentage of guns (about 27 percent) traced to the United States. These percentages significantly differ from those in ATF testimony before Congress
When confronted with the OIG analysis, ATF then admitted to the OIG that the 90% figure cited to Congress is misleading. During this 2010 review by the OIG, ATF could not provide updated information on the percentage of traced Mexican crime guns that originated in or imported through the United States.
2. ATF’s proposed reporting is overly broad. Rather than “a very narrow group of long guns” as ATF stated, the proposed rule includes a huge number of guns unlikely to be trafficked. Instead of specifying the guns ATF keeps saying are the problem (AK47, AR15, .50 caliber, etc.), they have included a huge number of curio and relic rifles up to 100 years old of interest mainly by collectors, and many rifles chambered for obsolete ammunition no longer manufactured.
3. ATF’s proposed reporting constitutes a direct two-fold violation of the Firearm Owners Protection Act by requiring these records be transferred to the United States Government, and also constitutes a system of registration of firearms and firearm owners.
“No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or disposition be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.”
4. Once reported to ATF, these proposed registration records never go away, but permanently remain in ATF databases at the National Tracing Center, and if traced, will be reported to corrupt Mexican police.
If a trace links to any of these records, even in error, many innocent American gun owners personal information (including name and address, height, weight, drivers license number, possibly Social Security Number, date of birth, place of birth, and all other guns linked to that last name and date of birth) will be reported with a trace. If your name is Smith (or Garcia in the Southwest), there are many people with the same date of birth!