The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
This is simply unbelievable. This is from NPR’s Senior Development VP Ron Schiller:
And not just Islamophobic, but really xenophobic. I mean, basically, they are – they believe in sort of white, middle America, gun-toting … I mean, it’s pretty scary. They’re seriously racist.
Cut their funding… now.
The head of ATF is a key law enforcement position. It’s particularly critical now, as the U.S. grapples with weapons smuggling from this country to Mexico. As Tribune Newspapers reported Friday, ATF ran a weapons-tracking operation that went terribly awry, allowing hundreds of firearms into Mexico that were later used in crimes.
It went terribly awry, so clearly ATF needs anti-gun leadership at the top. The bureaucrats solution to failure is more funding. The spoils of success is more funding. They can’t lose. It’s a shame we the taxpayers certainly can.
Several agents said the bigger problem was not in Mexico, but shortfalls in staffing and gun laws in the U.S., which had prevented the ATF from adequately monitoring multiple sales of semiautomatic rifles to suspicious buyers.
“We have roughly the same amount of people we had when they founded us in 1972,” one agent said.
He said Congress and the Obama administration had refused to support the ATF’s proposal to require federally licensed gun sellers to report multiple sales of long-barreled rifles, as they were with handguns, to a single buyer.
“Can someone tell me how I can find out if Joe Blow just bought 50 guns at a gun store? If they do, I’ll be happy to sit outside the door and ask him why he bought them. But otherwise, I won’t know until they start showing up at crime scenes,” the agent said.
Trying to wrap my head around this one. ATF can’t keep track of guns that have been voluntarily reported to them by dealers, so the solution is to mandate even more data? There’s been some speculation, both at Uncle’s and Truth about Guns. I think empire building is a likely explanation, but I’ll speculate on a twist to that theme. The plan was hatched by bureaucrats who have little knowledge or concern for how to do proper police work. The idea would have been to allow firearms to walk, which presumably then would get trafficked to Mexico, be seized at crime scenes in Mexico, and then be traced back to the straw buyers, who could be squeezed to turn on the larger traffickers. If you’re an ATF bureaucrat looking to advance his career, the idea of making a large bust like this using data aggregation techniques, instead of sound police methods, would be pretty irresistible. Obviously agents on the ground who are familiar with sound police methods realized the inherent hazard of this type of operation, and blew the whistle.
This also would explain why they want mandatory long gun reporting, because that would mean even more data. More importantly, it would mean even more data ATF doesn’t have to take responsibility for by walking guns. They could get out of the business of telling dealers to make sales for people who are obviously trafficking.
This kind of law enforcement by data mining isn’t a substitute for good police work. Unfortunately, it would seem there’s a lot of folks in ATF leadership that thinks it is, and the desire for the big career making score is allowing guns to get into the hands of thugs and murderers.
Jim Lindgren of the Volokh Conspiracy has some interesting observations on the matter, namely that they are trying to federally pin all victims on Loughner. This adds to what Dave Hardy was saying early after the shooting that prosecuting Loughner federally is a mistake, and that Arizona courts would have been the better venue to get a conviction.
More than 40 House Democrats are calling on President Obama to approve new rules granting federal regulators more authority to crack down on gun trafficking to Mexico.
The request comes at an unfortunate time for the lawmakers, however, as the Department of Justice (DOJ) has just launched a probe into reports that hundreds of guns were lost amid a federal sting designed to track firearms by letting known smugglers buy them with impunity.
Apparently 40 Democratic lawmakers don’t mind the fact that federal law prohibits what the ATF wants to do. They are perfectly fine with the Obama Administration assuming the powers of Congress, and changing the law as he sees fit.
He believes the following should be in the Constitution:
One wonders how that works. If you have a right to this things that means other people are obligated to provide it for you, and if I have an obligation against my will to provide you with something, I would be what you’d call, at least in some part, a slave.
It seems to me that if our opponents made fun of us for suggesting arms in civilian hands might have been handy in Egypt, Libya is a better example of the notion. Peaceful protest only works against a regime that is reluctant to murder its own people wholesale.
There have been some very interesting posts over a Volokh on whether or not Obama is right to sandbag on defending the Defense of Marriage Act in Court. The Administration has suggested that the law is unconstitutional. Orin Kerr referred to it as an executive power grab. David Bernstein takes the administration to ask for saying they won’t defend it, but will keep enforcing it. Also, Ilya Somin looks at it from both a theoretical and practical point of view.
Speaking strictly as a matter of theory , I’ve never agreed with the notion that the Supreme Court is the only body that can have an opinion on a law’s constitutionality. While I would agree they certainly have the final say in the matter, I have no issue with a sitting President refusing to enforce or defend laws that President has a good faith belief are unconstitutional. In fact, I expect Presidents to stand by their oath and refuse to enforce or defend unconstitutional laws.
That said, I’m not sure I agree with the President that DOMA is unconstitutional, even if politically I agree with the end result of not defending it. Sandbagging the defense of DOMA could also, potentially, be smart politics for the Democrats. Homosexuality is a divisive issue for Republicans, since acceptance of it alienates social conservatives, while rallying against it tends to scare off younger voters, some independents, and libertarian Republicans.
As long as Republicans are busy making themselves seen as trying to cut deficits and spending, the Democrats are going to be on the losing side of the middle in that debate. If Obama can goad the Republicans into fighting on better ground for the Democrats, namely contentious social issues, it probably helps their party over the long term, as the generation gap on the gay issue gets larger. I don’t think this tactic is going to help them as long as the economy is sour, so the short term effect won’t accomplish anything more than keeping the Democrat base from totally falling apart heading into the 2012 elections. But longer term, the Democrats are on the right side of this issue politically.
Or perhaps anti-stimulus. Apparently Reid thinks that ending prostitution in Nevada is going to somehow going to grow the economy:
“One of the businessmen in that meeting told me he simply couldn’t believe that one of the biggest businesses in the county he was considering for his new home is legal prostitution,” he said.
Sounds like a great way to help Nevada’s economy, shuttering the biggest industry in a county. You’d think that would be a fringe benefit to a lot of executives.