This week, out-going Attorney General Eric Holder told an interviewer that his biggest failure as attorney general was not getting effective gun control legislation passed in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy. Leaving aside the fact that Holder is not a legislator, what an ironic comment from the man who oversaw the Operation Fast and Furious scandal run by ATF. Yes, I say that Holder oversaw Fast and Furious even though he has denied it and claimed that when he learned of it, he stopped it.
Nonsense.
As a DEA agent I occasionally had the opportunity to work with ATF. I had high regard for them because along with DEA they had the most dangerous job in federal law enforcement. Today they are an agency in shambles in no small part due to the corruption and mismanagement of the Department of Justice under Eric Holder.
I knew from the outset of this scandal that such a scheme of allowing thousands of weapons to "walk" into Mexico with no hope of seizing them and arresting their ultimate recipients could never have been hatched by street level agents in Arizona or even their immediate supervisors. This was a political plan at the highest levels of the DOJ if not the White House. The reason? So that when said weapons were recovered at the scenes of shootings in Mexico, the Obama administration could argue that most of the weapons used by drug cartels came from the US-hence the need to restrict gun sales and ownership. And show up at murder scenes they did including the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and possibly that of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico. Even that couldn't stir then DHS head Janet Napolitano to so much as demand answers from Holder as to why this operation had led to the deaths of one if not two of her agents. She confirmed that to me personally when I asked her about it during her speaking appearance at UCLA in 2012.
But back to Holder. His failures as attorney general are so numerous as to make it difficult to say which was the worst. "Failures" is actually the wrong word. Misdeeds is a better term. In Fast and Furious as with other scandals, Holder came before Congress and perjured himself. He withheld thousands of internal DOJ documents that were subpoenaed by Congress. The legacy of Fast and Furious has been the shooting deaths of hundreds of people, mostly in Mexico with those weapons-a number that will continue to grow.
And Eric Holder laments that his biggest failure was not getting tougher gun laws passed after Sandy Hook! Operation Fast and Furious was Eric Holder's Sandy Hook.
Anti-gunners normally start out with the relatively innocuous-sounding proposition for universal gun registration as a mechanism to keep guns "out of the wrong hands". This is a two-fold fallacy.
ReplyDeleteFirst, bad guys are notoriously and inherently disinclined to purchase firearms where any form of documentation/registration is involved. The probable best example of this is that according to FBI statistics, from 1998 through 2012, of well over 160 million gun transactions involving the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), only a little over a million, a whopping 0.62% (yes, I said 0.62%) of attempted gun purchases were by prohibited persons and were denied.
The NCIS is, of course a good thing and it is at least somewhat effective. I would note that it was, of course, strongly supported by both the NRA and the great bulk of its members.
Second, even if a bad guy/prohibited person does come into possession of gun and does not register it where such is required, he/she/it may NOT be prosecuted for either failure to register the firearm or, for that matter, possession of an unregistered firearm (SCOTUS decision, Haynes v. United States, 390 U.S. 85, 1968, 7-1 decision with, I believe, Marshall not ringing in at all).
So much for gun registration effectiveness.
Good point.
ReplyDeleteThanx Gary, it just demonstrates that gun registration and other such schemes primarily, in fact virtually totally, affect, by definition, ONLY the law-abiding and are not at all effective relative to the mopes.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that while I am often, although admittedly not always (depends on where I buy it), required to produce at least photo ID and undergo a background check to exercise my Second Amendment right to have a gun, and go through training/testing if I wish to carry concealed, the left wants even more restrictions (some combination of registration, licensing, waiting periods, rationing of number/frequency of purchases, etc., as well as total bans on some or all firearms).
At the same time, and also simultaneously, the left bridles fiercely if anyone dares to suggest, say, any requirement to merely show photo ID prior to voting or have any waiting period at all, let alone the burdensome 24-72 hour period usually involve, for an abortion, neither of which rights is, incidentally, even specifically enumerated in the Constitution.
Take your pick as to whether that is ignorance, rank hypocrisy, or gross inconsistency, or maybe all three.
Gary--the below may be a duplicate post, if so, forgive me.
ReplyDeleteIt just demonstrates that gun registration and other such schemes primarily, in fact virtually totally, affect, by definition, ONLY the law-abiding and are not at all effective relative to the mopes.
I find it interesting that while I am often, although admittedly not always (depends on where I buy it), already required to produce at least photo ID and undergo a background check to exercise my Second Amendment right to have a gun, and go through training/testing if I wish to carry concealed, the left wants even more restrictions (some combination of registration, licensing, waiting periods, rationing of number/frequency of purchases, etc., as well as total bans on some or all firearms).
At the same time, and also simultaneously, the left bridles fiercely if anyone dares to suggest, say, any requirement to merely show photo ID prior to voting or have any waiting period at all, let alone the burdensome 24-72 hour period usually involved, for an abortion, neither of which rights is, incidentally, even specifically enumerated in the Constitution.
Take your pick as to whether that is ignorance, rank hypocrisy, or gross inconsistency, or maybe all three.
Elwood,
ReplyDeleteYou are correct. The biggest contradiction I see is the voter ID objections. You need photo ID to get on an airplane, why not to vote?
A culture of incompetence and irresponsibility is not created overnight by the accession of a new attorney general. The rot dates back at least to Waco 1993, not that the Branch Davidians didn't need some intervention by the law, but it could have been handled in a manner that would have released people rather than killing them.
ReplyDeleteAs to the non sequitir of Voter ID, the Supreme Court of Arkansas had the finest word on the subject: the state constitution specifies the requirements to vote; not even the legislature may add additional requirements.
Also, the Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner, who wrote the decision upholding Indiana's voter ID law a few years ago, has recognized that the measure is indeed a voter suppression measure, and written in pointed language that the scenarios conjured up in support of such a measure border on the literally crazy.
Siarlys--no "non sequitir" (sic) here. The three rights noted (guns, voting, abortion) are all, I believe, essentially fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution. The point was that most of the left, themselves illogically in my view, insist on treating two of them in a drastically different manner than the other one. This is what I call "consequentialism", and if we are to do that, we also need to reconsider the entire Constitution and all 27 amendments to it in terms of their consequences as well (perhaps with a Constitutional convention, haven't had one in a little while now).
ReplyDeleteI would tend to agree on the Arkansas situation. I would not have the slightest problem with some States having voter ID requirements based on proper amendment of the State constitution and others not. Of course, when/if Federal courts get in on the act, it would appear that amending the State constitution and enacting a statute would be essentially one and the same, no??
Interestingly, I just tripped across an August 2014 decision by a Senior U.S. District Court Judge (a Clinton appointee, no less, and in California, of all places) that California's 10-day waiting period for purchase of a firearm essentially violates the Second Amendment and creates a burden on it and on Californians' right to keep and bear arms.
ReplyDeleteAmong the court's findings was that the State failed to show that the waiting period was one of the types of longstanding, presumably lawful regulations (possession of a firearm by convicted felon or mental incompetent, carrying of firearms in certain places, etc. as identified by SCOTUS in D.C. v. Heller).
I would also note in passing that the Heller court definitively knocked down the idea that the use of the word "militia" in the Second Amendment involves only those involved in State militia service, and further asserts that the "people" to whom the Second Amendment right is accorded are the same "people" who enjoy First and Fourth Amendment protection. What in the world could make more sense??
This case will undoubtedly make its way on appeal to the notoriously ultra-liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which again undoubtedly will reverse the District court and hold that the waiting period is in fact constitutional. Hopefully, it will end up at SCOTUS.
What a difference!!! The left, to include nearly all "liberal" judges at all levels, lives in fear that some court might possibly weaken Roe v. Wade or strengthen voter ID requirements, constantly invoking the doctrine/principle of "stare decisis" in that regard. At the same time, it continually seeks to impose serious requirements/restrictions on guns, up to and including bans on some or all of them, which runs counter to both Heller and McDonald.
Nothing either more or less than agenda flogging and judicial activism/politics rather than judging.
A state constitutional amendment may no more violate rights of citizens protected by the Fourteenth Amendment than a state statute. elwood is right as far as that goes. However, a state constitutional provision that provides greater rights than the federal courts have expounded from the federal constitution are immune to federal review.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the word "rights" have been over-used. The importance of the constitution is that is RESTRAINS the actions of government, more than it enunciates "rights." There are express rights, such as the right to be secure in one's home and papers. But there is no "right to abortion." There is a general restraint against government interference in the private sphere. Sometimes courts have to adjudicate what the boundaries of that sphere are.
In the case of abortion, government can no more mandate abortion than it can prohibit abortion, because abortion is simply none of its business.
In any event, voting is a fundamental of citizenship in a constitutional republic, the foundation of government being "of the people, by the people, for the people." For minions of that government, supposed servants of the people, to start defining that you are not a person unless you can show ID, is questionable for very different reasons than passing criminal laws against abortion.
As to guns, the Second Amendment is in the constitution, so that is the starting point of any discussion.
There was a case recently where two men started shooting at each other over an accusation that someone had stolen someone's baby-momma's girls' clothes. Neither was hit, but a ten year old girl was hit in the head and died a couple of weeks later without ever regaining consciousness.
I would like to see some reasonable time, place and manner regulations that would reduce the propensity of such young men to carry guns, without removing my ability to buy and keep a gun in my own home (after I learn how to use it properly).
At the time the Second Amendment was written, young men, and women, learned gun safety as a matter of course. Even fifty years ago, most children knew the quickest ways to find themselves in a world of pain would be to look in grandma's purse or to touch a firearm without adult supervision and permission. A lot of those life experiences just aren't routine any more.
Three different issues, three different constitutional derivations, definitely not suitable for a blanket resolution like they're all the same thing.