Posts Tagged Gun Control

HOUSTON, TEXAS – The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF) agents are in the midst of  fanning out across Texas in order to conduct house by house investigations into what the agency deems numerous  “suspicious” firearms transactions and as a means to combat “narco-terrorism” along the U.S. /Mexican border.

In fact, the “suspicious” transaction searches are so loosely defined, that BATF agents ended up questioning a Houston area pastor who previously purchased two handguns for target practice, which is then flippantly chalked up as “hard to believe”. Additionally, interagency cooperation between the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the BATF have led to  warrantless airplane surveillance of vehicles along the border.

To read the entire article click here.

Executive Summary – The USA state of Montana has signed into power a revolutionary gun law. I mean REVOLUTIONARY.

The State of Montana has defied the federal government and their gun laws. This will prompt a showdown between the federal government and the State of Montana. The federal government fears citizens owning guns. They try to curtail what types of guns they can own. The gun control laws all have one common goal – confiscation of privately owned firearms.

Montana has gone beyond drawing a line in the sand. They have challenged the Federal Government. The fed now either takes them on and risks them saying the federal agents have no right to violate their state gun laws and arrest the federal agents that try to enforce the federal firearms acts. This will be a world-class event to watch. Montana could go to voting for secession from the union, which is really throwing the gauntlet in Obamas face. If the federal government does nothing they lose face. Gotta love it.

Important Points – If guns and ammunition are manufactured inside the State of Montana for sale and use inside that state then the federal firearms laws have no applicability since the federal government only has the power to control commerce across state lines. Montana has the law on their side. Since when did the USA start following their own laws especially the constitution of the USA, the very document that empowers the USA.

Click here for the full article.

Obama is using the oft-disproved contention that “90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States” as the stated basis of his support for the international treaty he is promoting. The treaty is formally known as the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials (CIFTA) treaty. The Bill Clinton administration signed the treaty back in 1997, but the U.S. Senate has never ratified the treaty. Obama intends to change that.

If ratified, the treaty would require the United States to adopt “strict licensing requirements, mark firearms when they are made and imported to make them easier to trace, and establish a process for sharing information between national law enforcement agencies investigating [gun] smuggling.”

Read more about this article here.

It sure is really nice to see rulings upholding the rights of the citizens.

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that private citizens can challenge state and local gun laws by invoking the constitutional right to bear arms – the first such ruling in the nation – but upheld a ban on firearms at gun shows at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton.

The ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco followed last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision that the Constitution’s Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess guns for self-defense.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2009%2F04%2F21%2FBA1V1760BI.DTL

A top National Rifle Association official said the Obama administration is using the increased publicity surrounding drug cartels in Mexico as an opportunity to push for reinstating the ban on semi-assault weapons.

“They’re trying to piggyback this whole phony issue on the back of the tragedy in Mexico,” said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the gun-rights group, on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/19/nra-white-house-pushing-weapons-ban-reinstatement/

Generally, the best way to get someone to believe what you have to say is to either mix a little truth with a lot of lies, or mix a little lie with a lot of truth. Over exhagerating statistics is also a good way to do it too.

So, two articles come out this week on the same day, and both of them say two totally different things. Sher Zieve a conservative, political commentator released an article, which you can find here, about an interview she had with a former US Border Patrol Supervisor of 27 years, David J Stoddard. He had this to say:

Dave: There are no gun shops in the United States where you can buy an AK-47 with a selector switch. You cannot buy hand grenades, fully automatic weapons, high explosives or Rocket Propelled Grenades. The Mexican Cartels are using all of those. The cartels are getting those weapons from corrupt members of the Mexican Government which has obtained them from the USA, and from other sources in Central and South America. It is a huge lie that 90% of the cartel weapons are supplied by straw purchasers in the USA.

Remember that the ZETAs deserted from the Mexican Army after being trained and armed by the USA. The ZETAs simply took their weapons and gear with them to the Cartels.

Additionally, STRATFOR and M-3 have been reporting for the last year and a half that the cartels have allied with FARC and FARC is supported by Hugo Chavez. The Cartels are being supplied by FARC. Last year Columbia raided a FARC camp in the jungles of Columbia and found some Mexicans being trained and armed by FARC. I assure you that those Mexicans were not upstanding members of their communities in Mexico.

What? So you mean the Mexican drug cartels who have killed nearly 8,000 people since January 2008 and kidnapped thousands more are getting their weapons from the FARC and NOT from law abiding American gun brokers? Some of the guns also came from our own government? Sort of sounds like the blow back we are facing in a little area across the world called the Middle East.

David also had this to say a little later in the interview:

Dave: Obama and Napolitano have bowed to the various open borders and subversive groups. Eric Holder and Napolitano are discontinuing interior enforcement and the 287g program which allows local law enforcement to remove illegal aliens from our communities. The mantra is that local cops are “racial profiling,” arresting innocent “illegal aliens,” and “splitting families.” All of that is hype. There are no “innocent” illegal aliens. Every one of them has violated criminal laws. And, when they steal an identity, or get a phony I.D., they become felons. So they ALL are criminals. Plus, every time you send a bank robber to prison you are “splitting a family,” so what is wrong with giving a deported felon the opportunity to take his “family” with him so as not to “split” it?

Also on the same day, an article released by the Los Angeles Times, which you can find here, tells a much, much different story than the account you just read from a man who spent 27 years trying to protect our borders.

Experts and members of Congress likewise said Mexico had not become a “failed state” despite corruption and intimidation that have weakened local control in some areas.

“Cartels are primarily interested in fighting each other,” not in challenging for political control, Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas, El Paso, where the hearing was held, told the senators.

Are you kidding me? Not interested in political control? Every report from the border area suggests that the cartels are taking over and controlling hundreds of towns. If politicians make the laws and the police enforce them, and neither of them are able to function, that sounds like they are also controlling areas politically to me. The article went on further to say:

Kerry called for a ban on the imports of assault rifles, such as the AK-47, into the United States. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., opposed the idea.

Assault rifles bought in the United States are favorites among cartel gunmen, who find them effective for the urban warfare, William McMahon, deputy assistant director of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told the committee. ATF agents have traced many guns confiscated in Mexico to purchases in the United States, McMahon said.

For example, more than 60 guns seized following a shootout among factions of the Tijuana cartel in April 2008 were traced to purchases in Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia and Denver, McMahon said.

This really conflicts with the report by David Stoddard. 60 guns is not a very large number, especially when they list 8 different cities to which they can be supposedly traced back to. I also find it hard to believe that these weapons can be attributed to nearly 8,000 murders. Senator Kerry, and the Obama administration should really be looking at the root cause of all the murders, not how they commit them. The same problem that led to the Al Capones, and the murders, extortion, and other criminal activity of the mob in the 1920’s, prohibition.

The prohibition on drugs, more commonly known as the war on drugs, has been a complete failure. The Mexican violence is between rivaling cartels who want to make money off of the drugs. The violence is not because they really love guns and enjoying shooting them. It is not the job of the American government to impose controls on guns in America to solve a problem in another country.

The Second Amendment must be upheld. I do not smoke, but I will defend your right to smoke until the day I die. So too, must you defend the entire Constitution, even if you do not own or particularly care for guns. We are called to punish those who commit the crimes, not punish the masses because a small minority is committing the crimes.