Tag Archives: Brady Bill

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Did attorney general Eric Holder lie to Congress about gun sales to drug cartels?

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On the Laura Ingraham show, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson explains the latest about the Obama administration plan to oversee the sale of 2,000 guns to Mexican drug cartels – some of them extremely dangerous, like the Barrett M82 sniper rifle that can hit targets a MILE away. (H/T Kelly)

Excerpt:

Today, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson was on the Laura Ingraham show to discuss new documents that show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed about Operation Fast and Furious as early as July 2010, which contradict Holder’s Congressional testimony on May 3 when he said, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Attkisson revealed that she had been yelled and screamed at by the Justice Department and White House spokesmen for asking about what Holder knew and when he knew it.

1:31 – In between the yelling that I received from Justice Department yesterday, the spokeswoman–who would not put anything in writing, I was asking for her explanation so there would be clarity and no confusion later over what had been said, she wouldn’t put anything in writing–so we talked on the phone and she said things such as the question Holder answered was different than the one he asked. But he phrased it, he said very explicitly, ‘I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.’

6:05 – Laura: So they were literally screaming at you?
Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”

7:33 – Laura: Do we know the exact number [of guns] that went over to Mexico?
Attkisson: We know more than 2,000 in Fast and Furious and I will soon be reporting on the fact that that is not the only case. 2,000 for that operation according to the agents involved.

8:28 – …It is sort of a drip, drip. And I’m certainly not the one to make the case for DOJ and White House about what I’m doing wrong. They will tell you that I’m the only reporter–as they told me–that is not reasonable. They say the Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, the New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.

How has the Obama Justice decided to handle reporters inquiring about this lethal operation? They have denied access to, lied and yelled at reporters.

Fox News reports that the Republicans are requesting a special counsel to investigate Eric Holder’s connection to the Fast and Furious scandal.

Excerpt:

House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.

The question is whether Holder knowingly made false statements of fact under oath during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious until about April 2011. 

“I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks,” Holder testified.

The Department of Justice defended Holder in a statement Tuesday.

“The Attorney General’s testimony to both the House and the Senate was consistent and truthful,” it read. “He said in both March and May of this year that he became aware of the questionable tactics employed in the Fast and Furious Operation in early 2011 when ATF agents first raised them publicly, and at the time, he asked the Inspector General’s office to investigate the matter.”

However, newly discovered memos suggest otherwise. For instance, one memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center “beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010,” Smith wrote.

“These updates mentioned, not only the name of the operation, but also specific details about guns being trafficked to Mexico,” Smith wrote in the letter to Obama. 

“Allegations that senior Justice Department officials may have intentionally misled members of Congress are extremely troubling and must be addressed by an independent and objective special counsel. I urge you to appoint a special counsel who will investigate these allegations as soon as possible,” Smith wrote.

[…]Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News on Tuesday that Holder saying he didn’t understand the question rather than he didn’t know of the program is not a successful defense to perjury.

Even the liberal Los Angeles Times is covering the story. CBS News has been covering the story for a while.

I wonder if some of our Democrat commenters (e.g. – McSpinster) would like to explain to me why it is OK for drug cartels to have .50 caliber sniper rifles, but it’s not OK for law-abiding fathers to defend their families with handguns. Can someone explain why Democrats are OK with murderous drug-smuggling criminals having assault rifles, but not OK with women carrying pistols so that they can feel safe when they go jogging at night? I want to know why the Obama administration indirectly approved the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Is this the scandal that’s going to bring down the Obama administration? At least with Watergate, nobody died.

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New Operation Fast and Furious e-mails sent to White House official

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From CBS News. (H/T Director Blue)

Excerpt:

Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell – who led Fast and Furious – and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are long time friends.

ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF’s gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O’Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office’s gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as “letting guns walk.”

[…]Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF’s Newell sent the White House’s O’Reilly an “arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up.” The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

[…]Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O’Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O’Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

Director Blue has posted some of the e-mails featuring ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office William D. Newell, Obama’s homeland security adviser John Brennan and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin M. O’Reilly.

He concludes:

It’s no longer a question of whether Eric Holder knew; it’s whether President Obama knew and approved of Operation Fast and Furious. The rogue ATF operation sent thousands of military-grade weapons to Mexican drug cartels. And at least two of the weapons were discovered at the scene of last December’s killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

When will the rest of the mainstream media (non-CBS)  start to cover this story? Or are they afraid to? Is this too big for them to cover? Are they afraid of the White House exerting pressure on them?

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Do gun control laws cause crime rates to go down?

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First, here’s a story from the Richmond Times-Dispatch regarding their new law relaxing restrictions on legal firearm ownership.

Excerpt:

Virginia’s bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found.

Columnist Don Surber adds:

So the gun crimes dropped and the gun crimes that they had were not by people with concealed gun permits but rather by outlaws.

In fact, the newspaper reported: “Only two fatal shootings occurred during the last fiscal year — one outside a Petersburg nightclub and the other at a Radford restaurant — but neither involved concealed-gun permit holders. And only two of the 18 aggravated assaults reported could be linked definitively to concealed-carry holders.”

Once again, our moral and intellectual superiors on the left are wrong.

But is that the normal outcome of relaxing gun control laws, or an anomaly? What do the government statistics show?

Even the leftist MSNBC agrees that legal gun ownership reduces crime.

Excerpt:

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.

So even liberal MSNBC thinks that legal firearm ownership reduces crime rates.

Let’s learn about the issue from the news

ABC News explains in this short 6-minute clip:

And here is a longer 44-minute show from Fox Business: (featuring a debate between economist John Lott and the Brady Campaign spokesman)

The debate is about John Lott’s book “More Guns, Less Crime”, published by the University of Chicago Press. There are other debates in the show as well.

Now watch a 3-on-3 debate on gun control

This debate is in 13 parts, featuring the two of the best proponents of legal firearm ownership – John Lott and Gary Kleck. The real sparks fly during the Q&A, so don’t miss that. (If you can’t watch the debate, then you can read this post and this post instead).

Here’s part 1, which contains the introduction.

Here are the remaining speeches:

This is everything you need to know about whether legal ownership of firearms reduce crime.